Japanese businesses lose out in hiring of top Chinese talent

In the old days, when the Japanese management style helped to push Japan to the top of the economic stratosphere, Japanese corporations often laughed at the inefficient operations of their Chinese counterparts.

But now, as fast-growing China is set to overtake Japan as the world's second-largest economy, Japanese companies find themselves near the bottom of the pecking order in terms of hiring in China.

The most talented Chinese are flocking to Chinese, U.S. and European companies that offer higher wages and better chances for promotion than Japanese companies. Other skilled workers are fleeing their Japanese employers for more promising futures at Chinese firms.

And even Japanese workers, who could be regarded as the new "cheap labor" in China, are turning to foreign companies.

A job offer posted on a website for MBA graduates from a prestigious Chinese university underscores how rising salaries in China are luring elite workers.

It said: "Offer from a head-hunting firm. Post of deputy manager, sales headquarters, at a major sports gear company. Experience at a foreign firm in the same business required. Annual pay 1.5 million yuan (19.5 million yen, or $230,000)."

"It's adequate because the rivals are such popular makers as Nike of the United States or Adidas of Germany," said a member of the group. "No one would take the post for 1 million yuan."

Until five years ago, 1 million yuan could hire someone as CEO, said pioneer head-hunter Louisa Wong, founder of Bo Le Associates Ltd., a Hong Kong-based executive search company specializing in Chinese.

One million yuan can now hire only up to a business manager, she said.

Foreign companies used to come to China for cheap labor, but they now need market-knowledgeable people who understand regional differences, can liaise with government officials and lead sales strategy in the country.

According to Wong, the annual salary for a CEO is 2 million to 3 million yuan--a level beyond what ordinary Japanese companies can pay to people in charge of their Chinese operations.

Wong said multinational companies want a "superman" who can handle any task related to developing the Chinese market.

She said her business remained brisk even during the financial crisis that started in fall 2008.

Pierre Zhuang, chief of Bo Le's Shanghai operations, worked for the Chinese arm of Suntory Ltd. when he was recruited by Wong to the nascent head-hunting industry.

The market in China grew tenfold in the past 10 years to 20 billion yuan. Zhuang foresees another tenfold increase in the coming decade.

Bo Le has further expanded its business this year by concluding a deal with Japan's Recruit Co., which obtained a 14.3-percent stake in the company.

Dai Huaizong, chief at the Chinese arm of French electronics and cookware maker Groupe SEB, used to work for another European company. He earns nearly 4 million yuan a year, according to a company that head-hunted Dai.

Yao Mumu, 32, who left a foreign accounting firm in Beijing for the post of deputy financial director at a Chinese infrastructure firm, said phone calls from head-hunters are almost an daily occurrence.

A qualified accountant, Yao earns 400,000 yuan a year, far higher than the income for ordinary Chinese business people.

But she says: "The chances are 90 percent that I will switch jobs in five years. My annual income will perhaps be 1 million yuan then."

However, most Chinese aren't automatically offered huge salaries; they have to work at it to reach that level.

The average monthly wage of workers is 3,700 yuan, even in Beijing, where payments are relatively high. And in a tight job market, new college graduates' initial monthly salary is 3,000 yuan on average.

Changing jobs is one common way to increase one's fortunes, according to Zhu Xiaodong, who runs a marketing company in Beijing.

While an employee could expect to earn only up to 10,000 yuan a month after working many years, "the wage will jump to about 50,000 yuan if you switch jobs after getting new qualifications or building careers," he said.

An MBA degree is one of those qualifications deemed a "ticket to high-paying jobs."

About 78,000 people applied to MBA courses in China in 2010, twice as many as three years earlier.

Gao Xudong, director of the prestigious MBA program at Tsinghua University, said a major change has occurred among the course's graduates in the past five years.

"Most obtained jobs in foreign-affiliates before, but now a majority of our students are aiming for places in domestic companies," Gao said.

China's state-owned enterprises were once infamous for their inefficient management. But they are now regarded as the engine for the nation's growth, and they attract MBA holders by offering favorable benefits packages.

One female student in Tsinghua's MBA program worked for Mitsui & Co.'s local operations and then for Toyota Motor Corp.'s joint venture in China.

The 29-year-old says Toyota's inhouse training program was superb, but she found the daily overtime work unbearable.

Her Chinese colleagues, who went to Chinese automakers or Germany's BMW and Daimler, saw their wages almost double.

"(Toyota's) training is excellent, but the working conditions were bad. It has become a reaping ground for other businesses," she said.

The student said that once she obtains her MBA, Japanese companies will be off her radar in terms of employment.

She is not alone. Many who change jobs say they try to avoid Japanese, South Korean and Taiwanese companies, which have three problems in common: demanding work, low pay and little chance of promotion.

Personnel resources companies in China say wage levels at U.S. and European companies are about 1.5 times that of Japanese firms.

"If you offer salary levels of the past, then Chinese employees would flee," said Li Jun, 33, who quit an NEC Corp. affiliate to found a venture business in the environment field.

In good years for business, Li earns up to 100 million yen.

Born in a poor village in Sichuan province, Li said: "Because we can't foresee the future (in an unstable society), we want to build assets quickly. Companies are not aware of such pressing needs among Chinese workers."

A 33-year-old Chinese graduate of the University of Tokyo, who works for an independent administrative agency in Japan as a researcher, was surprised when he started looking for work in Beijing.

A major Japanese information technology firm offered only a quarter of what he earns now.

"That's so meager even though prices in Beijing are much lower than in Tokyo," he said.

A Chinese telecommunications firm, on the other hand, offered to match his pay in Japan.

"Chinese pay great attention to room for growth, such as how much the company will grow and what they would be allowed to do there," the man said, adding that Japan today doesn't offer such opportunities.

SEB's Dai also says promotion is a huge factor.

Dai has served as chief of Apple Inc.'s Chinese arm. "If Japanese companies do not entrust the post to Chinese, then they are not among the options."

Bo Le's Wong also points to the low level of CEO salaries at Japanese businesses.

Seeking equality among employees may be a Japanese business feature, but it does not work in China, she said.

Some Japanese corporations, such as trading house Mitsubishi Corp. and machinery maker Komatsu Ltd., are taking steps to promote Chinese employees to executive positions.

A locally hired Chinese was promoted to an executive post at Mitsubishi's Dalian subsidiary last year.

And in the Chinese offices of some major Japanese companies, there are cases where Chinese employees earn more than their Japanese colleagues.

But Jin Rui, general manager of Intelligence (China) Co., a Shanghai affiliate of Intelligence Ltd. of Japan, said most Japanese companies still put too much emphasis on Japanese language proficiency in hiring Chinese.

Meanwhile, as Chinese workers fetch higher salaries, young Japanese have emerged as lower-cost workers.

A 29-year-old Japanese man at a major U.S. call center in Dalian was surprised last summer to find his Chinese colleague was paid 13,000 yuan a month, much more than he got.

The employer raised the wages of Chinese after many hopped to a higher-paying U.S. rival and others demanded pay increases.

In Dalian, many offices are being set up to provide outsourcing services for Japanese businesses.

Such offices used to hire mainly Chinese, but they now are turning more to Japanese, who have difficulty finding jobs back home.

"There have always been openings for Japanese," said Wang Jin, head of Pasona Tech Dalian Co.

Chinese workers capable of speaking Japanese have strong academic backgrounds, but their initial pay is still generally lower than Japanese employees.

But in the industry, Japanese are said to be "low cost on the longer term" because they do not demand pay raises as Chinese do.

Japanese also tend to stay longer at one company, well aware of the tough job situation in Japan.

A major U.S. computer maker is also hiring Japanese for its call center in Dalian. In late October, five were newly employed from Japan, and their comments reflect the vast differences between the Chinese and Japanese job markets.

Ayaka Sakurada, 25, graduated from a British university but could not find a job in Britain or Japan. She has decided to study Chinese, too.

Yusuke Umewaka, 31, earned 270,000 yen a month at an apparel shop in Tokyo, but gave up on the "shrinking" retail sector in Japan.

A 28-year-old man quit a listed Japanese company, where he earned 6 million yen a year. He found his former employer, who rejected his proposals for new business, hopeless.

Junko Oishi, 36, came to Dalian after twice losing temporary staff jobs after the 2008 financial crisis. She says she could not expect to find a good job in Japan.

(This article was written by Tokuhiko Saito and Tetsushi Yamamura.)
http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201012270252.html

U.S. alarmed by falling Japanese enrollments at universities

The U.S. government is taking steps to encourage more Japanese students to study at U.S. universities out of concern that the recent sharp drop in Japanese enrollments might result in weakening bilateral relations over the long run.
The number of Japanese students who entered U.S. universities in fall last year dropped 15 percent from a year earlier to around 24,800, a sharp fall from around 47,000 in 2001, according to the U.S. Institute of International Education.

Japan placed sixth on the nationality list of students studying in the United States last year, while China, listed top, increased enrollments by around 30 percent to some 127,600. India ranked second followed by South Korea.

Declines in Japanese enrollments are blamed on an economic slowdown following the collapse of the bubble economy in the 1990s and the growing tendency among Japanese youth to prefer studying domestically to going abroad.

In order to stem the ongoing trend that Tokyo and Washington fear might lead to atrophying of ties between the two nations, Prime Minister Naoto Kan and President Barack Obama agreed in their talks in November to step up measures to broaden contacts between Japanese and Americans. They also confirmed that they should make use of the Japanese government's program for inviting Americans to teach English at Japanese schools.

The U.S. Embassy in Japan is also weighing in to get more Japanese to study at U.S. schools, sponsoring an English speech contest by Japanese high school students in November in Tokyo.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9KBFPL00&show_article=1

More Japanese students studying after university graduation to boost job prospects

A growing number of Japanese university graduates are studying at vocational schools instead of diving straight into the work force in a bid to acquire marketable skills amid the prolonged recession.

Nearly 20,000 university graduates entered vocational schools across the country this academic year, up nearly 4,000 from the previous year, according to a survey conducted by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

Some believe that their chance of finding jobs will increase after study at vocational schools because they are still regarded by employers as new graduates. Most Japanese companies prefer to hire new graduates.

Some vocational schools have even set up special courses for students who have graduated from universities.

The Ohara Gakuen educational corporation set up a special business course at the Tokyo-Suidobashi campus of its Ohara Boki Gakko (accounting school) this academic year. The new course is targeted at graduates of four-year universities and two-year junior colleges who failed to find jobs.

While supporting the students' ongoing job-hunting attempts, the new course trains them to acquire special knowledge and skills in various fields.

Course educators hold numerous interviews with individual students to teach them how to fill in job application forms and how to respond to job interviews, as well as to find the types of jobs they are suited to.

Ohara set up the course in response to a steady increase in the number of university graduates who enter vocational schools after failing to get jobs. As of Dec. 17, 35 out of 37 students enrolled in the course have received job offers.

One of them, a 22-year-old woman who studied at the course after graduating from Waseda University, got a job offer from a trading company.

"The school provides students with sufficient job guidance on an individual basis. It was really helpful. Universities, too, should improve their job guidance," she said.

A total of 1,662 university and junior college graduates and dropouts joined 17 vocational schools Ohara operates in the Tokyo metropolitan area this school year, including those enrolled in the special course. The figure was more than double the 792 students at its schools in the 2006 academic year.

"Some may wonder why these students enter vocational schools after graduating from university. But we've enjoyed high popularity from our students," an Ohara spokesman said. "I think this reflects growing demand for education provided by vocational schools, which help students acquire marketable skills."

Of about 600 freshmen at Tokyo School of Business, which caters to those aspiring to join the media as well as the pet business, 41 are university graduates.

"Usually, around 20 university graduates join our school each year, but the sharp rise is attributable to difficulties in finding jobs," says an official of the school. "If this trend continues, we'll consider setting up new courses."

Altogether, 7.3 percent of the 267,077 people who entered vocational schools in the academic year that began this April were university graduates, according to the ministry -- well above about 5 percent between 2001 and 2008.

The National Association of Special Institutes of Japan expects a further increase in the figure.

"If the severe employ situation continues, the number will further rise," said association Secretary-General Kaoru Kikuta.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20101223p2a00m0na010000c.html

No. of Japanese studying abroad down, foreign students in Japan rising

The number of Japanese studying abroad declined by a record level in 2008, while the number of foreign students currently studying in Japan reached a record-high as of May this year, reports by the education ministry and an independent organization showed Wednesday.

The Japan Student Services Organization said in its report that a record-high number of 141,774 foreigners are studying in Japan, up 9,054 from the year before, while the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology said the number of Japanese studying abroad totaled 66,833 in 2008, 8,323 fewer than the previous year.

The number of Japanese students studying aboard has been on the decline since peaking at 82,945 in 2004, while that of foreigners studying in Japan has been growing. In 2008, the number of foreign students in Japan was 123,829.

Education ministry officials said the current job recruitment process in Japan is apparently discouraging Japanese students from studying abroad for fear of missing out on opportunities to apply for jobs in a given period.

Students are reluctant to study abroad also because of current economic conditions, the officials said.

The Japanese government has set goals of having 300,000 foreigners studying in Japan and the same number of Japanese studying abroad by the year 2020.

It hopes to increase the number of Japanese students overseas by encouraging them to enroll in short-term programs.

The United States was the most popular destination for Japanese studying abroad in 2008 at 29,264. But the number dropped to 24,842 in 2009, according to the latest data by the Institute of International Education, which is used by the ministry to compile the report.

China was the second most popular at 16,733, followed by Britain at 4,465.

Students from Asia accounted for 92 percent of all foreigners studying in Japan, according to the latest survey by the student services organization. The number of students from China came to 86,173, up 7,091 from the previous year, accounting for 61 percent of the total, followed by 20,202 students from South Korea.

By prefecture, Tokyo has the largest number of foreign students at 45,617, followed by Osaka Prefecture at 10,791 and Fukuoka Prefecture at 9,665.

By university, Waseda University has accepted the largest number of foreign students at 3,568, followed by Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University at 2,921 and the University of Tokyo at 2,772.

(Mainichi Japan) December 23, 2010
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20101223p2g00m0dm004000c.html

Japan's new educational isolation

Would Mainichi readers be surprised to learn that Japan is preparing to ax one of the cornerstones of its higher education internationalization strategy?

The government's cost-cutting panel, which is trying to slash costs in a bid to trim the country's runaway public debt, voted on Nov. 18 to abolish and "restructure" the Global 30 project.

Launched last year with a budget of 3.2 billion yen, Global 30 envisioned "core" universities "dramatically" boosting the number of international students in Japan and Japanese students studying abroad, said the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

The ministry's strict selection process, however, meant that just 13 elite universities made the initial grade. Now the project has been terminated.

Can Japan afford this? Fewer than 4 percent of Japan's university students come from abroad -- 133,000, well below China (223,000) and the U.S. (672,000). Just 5 percent of its 353,000 university teachers are foreign, according to Ministry of Education statistics. Most of those are English teachers.

At the opposite end of the education pendulum, students here are increasingly staying at home: Japanese undergraduate enrollments in U.S. universities have plummeted by over half since 2000. Numbers to Europe are also down.

Japan, in the view of many, may be entering another period of educational sakoku -- or self-enforced isolation.

South Korea, with about half Japan's population, sends over twice as many students to the U.S. At some American universities, such as Cornell, Japan is behind not just China and South Korea, but even Thailand and tiny Singapore.

Japan's share of global research production, meanwhile, fell from 9.45 percent to 6.75 percent over the last decade, according to the latest Global Research Report. While the report noted "areas of excellence" in Japan's profile, it blamed its faltering performance on a dearth of international collaborations.

Global 30 was supposed to partly remedy those ills, helping Japanese universities reach a government goal of 300,000 foreign students by 2020, while sending the same number of Japanese students abroad.

"We think those universities will set an example for other colleges by leading with good practice," said Kato Shigeharu, deputy director of Higher Education Bureau at the ministry. "This practice will then diffuse to other colleges around the country."

That interview came before the government decision.

With the worst public debt in the industrialized world -- 900 trillion yen ($10.6 trillion) -- Japan has much less fiscal leg-room than its competitors. So budget cutting may be inevitable, but why not intensify the effort to target useless dams or highways rather than education?

The decision has been greeted with dismay. "This government is destroying Japan," said Yoshida Go, a professor with the Office of International Strategic Planning at Nagoya University -- one of the 13 selectees.

"Quite honestly, Japan is late in the game of globalization in higher education. But the government's left hand doesn't know what its right hand is doing." (By David McNeill)

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/perspectives/column/news/20101220p2a00m0na002000c.html

Firms turning to foreign students

University students are having a hard time finding jobs amid the economic downturn, with those who have secured employment starting after their scheduled graduation next spring hitting a record low of 57.6 percent as of Oct. 1.

But a new trend among firms to seek more aggressive and proactive employees may be creating more chances for foreign students looking for work experience in Japan, even in the increasingly competitive job market.

According to an August poll by job information provider DISCO Inc., 11 percent of responding firms said they have employed foreign students since April, and 21 percent said they plan to do so next fiscal year.

Rakuten Inc., the country's biggest online shopping mall operator, is one of the leading examples of firms opening up to foreign students.

The Tokyo-based company, which expects foreign employees to eventually comprise about half its workforce, began boosting its recruitment of foreign students in fiscal 2009.

It has already promised jobs to 78 students from 17 countries, accounting for about one-sixth of new employees slated to start next spring.

Among them is Cristina Popescu, 26, who came to Japan six years ago from Romania. Popescu grew up while the Eastern European country was democratizing, and state-run firms were collapsing.

"I've seen reports in Europe that say Japan is not doing well, but Japanese firms have technology and are creditworthy," said Popescu, a graduate student at Waseda University.

"I want to be involved in developing overseas markets once I enter the company and eventually start a business on my own to contribute to my homeland," she said. "I would be grateful if I can tie up with Rakuten then, too."

At the end of October, teams of Rakuten employees from nine countries gave presentations on elements they consider necessary for a company to become global.

Among the presentations, which reflected the unique views of the different nationalities, the American team listed flexibility and respect for individuality, while the Chinese team stressed the potential of China's market.

Meanwhile, Cross Marketing Inc., an Internet research company based in Tokyo, started to advertise at job fairs for foreign students from the end of June. The firm is also looking to recruit in China.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20101210f1.html?

City to be centre for Japanese scholarship exams Read more: City to be centre for Japanese scholarship exams

BANGALORE: Next year, students from Karnataka who want to study in Japan needn't go to one of the four metros for scholarship exams. They can come to Bangalore instead.

Announcing this in the backdrop of Emperor Akihito's birthday on December 14, Mayayuki Tsuchikawa, consul and head of the consulate told TOI that scholarships are offered in three courses -- undergraduate, diploma and professional training. "Once Class 12 results are out, an announcement will be made. Thereafter, entrance exams will be held here," Tsuchikawa said. Earlier, state students had to go to Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai or Kolkata. The Japanese embassy currently gives scholarships for research in science and at the post-graduate level.

To draw more students to Japanese universities, Tokyo University is setting up a liaison office in Bangalore next year.

VISA POWER

The number of Indian students in Japanese universities may not be high, but Japan is a favourite job destination.

Over 6,000 visas were issued here and work visas were the most. "More than 20,000 people from India visited Japan on a tourist visa last year,'' Tsuchikawa said.

The consul said 30-35 Japanese companies are setting up units in Karnataka and 150 are already functioning. Besides Toyota, some big names include Komtsu, Sony, Toshiba, Nishin and Yakult. "Japan Steel Company, the second largest steel company in Japan, will set up its independent unit next year in Karnataka. Now, it's functioning in collaboration with JSW,'' Tsuchikawa said.

The Japanese Bank for International Cooperation ( JBIC) has extended 44,704 million yen loan to the Bangalore Metro rail project.

After New Delhi, Karnataka is the favourite destination for Japanese in the country -- over 570 of them live in the state, with 560 in Bangalore alone.

Read more: City to be centre for Japanese scholarship exams - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bangalore/City-to-be-centre-for-Japanese-scholarship-exams/articleshow/7089614.cms#ixzz18Grdkj00

Cram school buys out Shane English School

Cram school operator Eikoh Inc. said Friday it has acquired Shane English School to strengthen its English-language education for elementary school children ahead of the planned compulsory teaching of the language for fifth- and sixth-graders.

Eikoh, based in the Kanto region, didn't disclose how much it paid for the acquisition of shares in the four operating companies that run the English school chain, which mainly operates in the Tokyo metropolitan area.

Representatives of both Eikoh and Shane English School said the acquisition won't involve personnel cuts or other drastic changes in operations.

Shane English School, a British English school owned by Saxoncourt Holdings, Ltd. based in the British Virgin Islands, operates 199 branches across the Kanto region, of which 46 are franchised.

The four operating companies that run Shane English School are Shane Corporation Japan Inc., Shane Corporation Kita Kanto Inc., Shane Corporation Higashi Kanto Inc. and Shane Corporation Minami Kanto Inc. Besides providing English lessons, Shane offers Chinese classes as well as overseas study programs.

Hiroyuki Otsubo of Eikoh's business management division said one reason for the buyout was Eikoh's desire to strengthen its English-teaching operations in time for the planned implementation in 2011 of English as a compulsory subject in elementary schools.

Otsubo said Eikoh has no plans to change the number of teachers working for Shane English School and its roughly 20,000 students will continue receiving the same services.

Eikoh operates 380 cram schools and has 67,000 students. A press release from Eikoh said that in the Tokyo area, Shane already holds 60 percent of its classes in the same location as classes hosted by Eikoh.

Takehiko Kikuchi, a PR representative for Shane English School, said company employees and teachers received the news calmly.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20101120a2.html

Home Schooling: Fewer Japanese Head to U.S. Universities

Japanese students are increasingly content on staying put in the classroom – at home.

The number of Japanese students who enrolled in U.S. universities dropped a whopping 15% for the 2009 academic year, following a 14% fall off the previous year, according to a report released this week. It was one of the biggest country declines noted.

The Japanese student population in the U.S. declined to 24,842 this year, or approximately 4,400 fewer students compared to 2008, according to an annual study by the Institute of International Education.

The survey results come in stark contrast to the deluge of students sent from Asian neighbors China, India and South Korea. Overall foreign student numbers increased 3% to almost 691,000 for the 2009 school year, driven by a charge of students from China. Chinese student enrollment soared 30% to an estimated 128,000 students, comprising 18% of the total international student population, the highest percentage of any country. India and South Korea followed in suit, making up 15% and 10%, respectively. Japan, on the other hand, accounted for 3.6% of the population slice.

The report’s findings reinforce a growing trend among a younger Japanese generation that is keener on staying home – a similar tenor pervading the work force. It is a troubling concern for Japan in what is yet another symptom of the “Galapagos syndrome” afflicting the country — where a complacent Japan is increasingly looking inward while rival countries are globalizing at a clipped pace. According to the IIE, the number of students from Japan studying in the U.S. has tumbled by nearly half from a decade earlier. The first double digit decrease occurred for the 2003 academic year when the student population fell 11.2% to 40,835.

And Japan likely won’t be shocked by the results. The Japanese media was horrified to realize there would only be one student from Japan in the 2010 freshman class at Harvard University when the Ivy League school’s president visited Japan in March. There were only five Japanese students studying at the university’s undergraduate college as of November 2009, about one-seventh and one-eighth of the number of enrolled Chinese and South Korean students, respectively. Japan’s presence at Columbia University, the fifth leading host college of foreign students, has been shrinking as well. The number of students enrolled in the New York City-based university fell to 237 students in 2009, down from 413 just six years earlier.

Studying abroad is “usually not considered as a legitimate or realistic path – both at the macro-social level and at the individual level,” said Yoshitaka Yamamoto, a member of the U.S. College Alumni Network of Japan, a non-profit organization that informs Japanese students of overseas education options, explaining Japan’s ebbing interest. Mr. Yamamoto, who graduated from Harvard in 2008, said few Japanese high schools “actively encourage” students to look at colleges overseas primarily because high school ratings are based on matriculation statistics to top domestic universities like Tokyo University and Kyoto University.

Then there is the sticky issue of what happens after graduation. Fearful that a diploma from overseas is less valuable compared to one imprinted with the name of a Japanese university parents are weary of how time abroad could handicap their children’s career prospects.

“That is because, presumably, most Japanese employers traditionally did not reward prospective new grad hires with an extensive overseas experience,” said Mr. Yamamoto.

Worried that a lack of exposure to the U.S., a key Japanese ally, will inevitably cloud future views of the relationship, not to mention the reason behind the heavy U.S. military presence in Japan, the government announced a series of initiatives to increase the flow of Japanese students and others sent to the U.S. The new measures aim to launch several thousand exchanges over the next five years, said Prime Minister Naoto Kan following his meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation last weekend.

Moves by Japanese companies like Rakuten to adopt a more global mindset may make U.S. universities more attractive, easing post-graduation anxieties, said Mr. Yamamoto.

And Japanese students already studying abroad are eager for more company.

“We very much enjoy having the Japanese students who already are part of the Harvard community, but they told me that they wished more of their compatriots came to study here,” said Harvard University President Drew Faust in an emailed statement to JRT, speaking about her trip to Japan earlier this year “They asked me to carry that message to Japan, and I was happy to do so.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2010/11/18/home-schooling-fewer-japanese-head-to-us-universities/

FamilyMart a convenient link for Asians eyeing Japan studies

FamilyMart Co., through its network of convenience store outlets in Asia, has begun offering help to foreign students looking to study in Japan.

In cooperation with Kawaijuku Educational Institution, a major prep school chain that offers university entrance exam preparation, and travel agency JTB Corp., FamilyMart will provide free newspapers at its overseas stores containing information on studying in Japan.

The new service will also offer assistance in obtaining visas and finding a place to live and part-time jobs in Japan. The company operates thousands of stores in Asia.

According to a survey of foreign students in Japan by 52school.com Corp., a member of the Kawaijuku group, many students found it hard to obtain information on universities and other schools in Japan matching their areas of study. They also had trouble applying to Japanese schools and finding a place to live upon arrival.

To help address such problems, FamilyMart started distributing a free newspaper with information on study in Japan at its convenience stores in Taiwan in mid-September. Taiwan has more than 2,500 FamilyMart stores.

Customers can pick up school application forms at the stores and receive help on how to apply. JTB will also assist students applying for student visas and make other arrangements, such as accommodations.

FamilyMart will help students get part-time jobs at its domestic stores.

According to Japan Student Services Organization, as of May 2009, about 133,000 foreign students were enrolled at Japanese four-year undergraduate schools, two-year junior colleges, graduate schools and other schools. Many were from Asian countries, including China, South Korea and Taiwan.

Based on a plan advocated in 2008 by then Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda to increase the number of foreign students in Japan to 300,000, the government hopes to attract more students from overseas. Government efforts include a project to improve the international competitiveness of Japan's institutions of higher education.

http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201010250291.html

More foreign students seeking work in Japan as companies pursue global talent

The number of foreign students looking for jobs in Japan is increasing as companies go global and seek more overseas workers -- providing tougher competition for Japanese students amid the ongoing economic downturn.

On Oct. 17 the Japan Student Services Organization (JASSO) held a job-seeking preparation seminar for overseas students. A total of 517 students from China, South Korea, Bangladesh and other countries took part -- a turnout that surpassed organizers' expectations. Many of the participants were from emerging Asian countries experiencing rapid economic growth, but wanted to work in Japan more than any other country.

"In China, the employment rate is not necessarily better than in Japan," said Ling Yi, a 27-year-old student from Shanghai who is in his first year of study in a postgraduate course at Kobe University. "The economic downturn and competition are harsh, but I want to find work in Japan."

Another 24-year-old participant from Vietnam, a third-year student at Osaka University, was also keen to work in Japan.

"Vietnam is like Japan 30 years ago. I want to pass on Japan's service system to Vietnam," the student said.

According to JASSO figures, there were 132,720 foreign students in Japan as of May 2009 -- a record high. The number of foreign students seeking jobs at Japanese companies has also been rising each year, reaching 11,040 in 2008.

At the same time Japanese companies have a keen eye on overseas students. About half of the approximately 600 new graduates that Fast Retailing Co., the operator of the Uniqlo chain, plans to take on in 2011 are foreigners. Companies such as Panasonic and Rakuten are also actively hiring personnel from overseas.

Sharp Chairman Katsuhiko Machida said that the talent of workers was a factor in the trend.

"The reason that employment of students from overseas is increasing and regular employment of Japanese is decreasing is a matter of ability," he said.

Mainichi Communications, a major employment information provider, said Japanese students needed to realize the gravity of the situation.

"Companies are cutting back on employment and it's precisely because of this that they are looking at the qualities of the students regardless of their nationalities. Japanese students need a sense of crisis," a company representative said.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/news/20101022p2a00m0na022000c.html

Study abroad key to Japan's future

The lack of student interest in studying abroad is casting a shadow over the future of this quickly graying nation, according to a noted German business professor.

"I can't overemphasize the importance of studying abroad," David Bach, the 35-year-old dean of programs at the IE Business School in Madrid, said in a recent interview with The Japan Times.

"It's incredibly important for Japan to have global managers. I think a global management education experience is a very important contribution to that, knowing people from all over the world, learning from them and learning a foreign language."

Bach, who was in Tokyo earlier this month to recruit students and meet alumni, said that because the Japanese market is bound to shrink due to its aging and shrinking population, Japan must bolster its international business expertise if it is to remain a wealthy nation.

"That means understanding the world. And earlier generations of Japanese managers did that very well," Bach said. "They went to Europe, they went to the U.S., starting in the '50s and the '60s, learning and acquiring the skills, understanding the customers and going out in full force."

It's important for succeeding generations to maintain this spirit in light of tremendous new opportunities in emerging markets, including India, Brazil and China, said Bach, a professor of strategic management.

Founded in 1973, the IE Business School is one of the leading institutions of its kind in the world and has a diverse student body. Often listed among the world's top 20 MBA programs by the Financial Times and The Economist, 90 percent of the students in its English MBA programs come from abroad, covering more than 70 different countries.

"You'll not get that diversity anywhere else. In the United States, at the most international diverse MBA program you might have 30 percent maybe 35 percent international students. Not 90 percent," Bach said.

The school offers each course in both English and Spanish. Of the approximately 700 students in its one-year MBA program, about 500 opt for the English classes, according to the professor.

"The leading European programs, such as ours, INSEAD (in France) and IMD (in Switzerland) are increasingly one-year programs. They are not two-year programs," he said, referring to the MBA programs in the U.S. "So, essentially, with half the time, with a lot more diversity, you can get the same degree."

Bach graduated from Yale University and received his master's and doctoral degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.

Bach, who also studied political science outside his own country, said it's very important to have the experience of living abroad and interacting with the people there.

"It provides you with ways to critically assess your own country and your own experience. Until you are in a foreign country, you take everything for granted," Bach said. "Comparison is incredibly important when it comes to gaining real insight."

Asked about the impression of Japanese students, Bach said they are smart and well-prepared. "The Japanese students add a lot to our program."

The knowledge of Japanese students, who have grown up in a Japanese political economy and who understand the way Japanese corporate governance works, is very important to the MBA programs, he said. "Japanese students contribute something in our discussions that others cannot contribute."

The school enrolls about 10 to 15 Japanese students every year. Although the numbers have dropped off in the past, they are picking up again and the school hopes more will apply, Bach said.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20101019f1.html

ELS plans language centres on campus

A SUBSIDIARY of language teaching giant Berlitz is planning to establish English teaching schools for foreign students at several Australian universities.

ELS has almost 50 schools with 15,000 students in the US and plans to expand into Australia and Canada.

ELS offers its own certificate of English proficiency, which competes with the widely accepted IELTS and TOEFL qualifications.

More than 600 US universities use the ELS 112 certification and 46 of them have an ELS language school on campus. The company also has a network of 1200 recruiting agents across the world looking for students who want to study abroad.

The company has been eyeing the strong growth in international student numbers in Australia, which it sees, along with Canada, as the next frontier. It has begun talks with several Australian universities.

ELS director of public relations Tadashi Okamura told the HES the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development was predicting 7.2 per cent annual growth in foreign student numbers worldwide, with China, South Korea and Saudi Arabia the big growth areas.

"We will see more and more opportunity in this area, especially in China," he said.

"A lot of people want to go to university, but because of the [relatively small] number of universities in China, they have to look for another country to study in.

"We have decided to expand this service not only in the US but to Australia and also Canada. We want to establish a network of universities in English-speaking countries."

He said one Australian university, which he declined to name, had already accepted the ELS 112 certificate of proficiency and the company was hoping this breakthrough would lead to broad acceptance across the sector.

Mr Okamura said ELS had already been in contact with the federal government about its intentions to expand into Australia and was pleased with the support it received.

Twenty per cent of undergraduate students in Australia are international students, compared with 3 per cent in Japan, he said.

"Australia is very, very active in recruiting international students. This is a national government policy to increase the number of international students, so they [the federal government] are very keen to work with us."

The company's pitch to universities is to deliver them foreign students with guaranteed English competency, allowing the universities to focus on delivering undergraduate and postgraduate courses and research.

Its pitch to students is about continuity: they can do their English training and degree in the same place.

"For the students we provide intensive English training, provide accommodation and help in applying to universities," Mr Okamura said.

ELS is aiming to establish language centres at as many universities as possible, depending on demand and student numbers. Its US operation has one language school for every 13 universities that accept its ELS 112 certification.

Like Berlitz, ELS is part of the publicly listed Benesse Group. The group's core business has been in educational products and services in Japan, but with the country's fertility rate dwindling, it has advanced into English teaching abroad through its acquisition of Berlitz and ELS.

Benesse, with interests in nursing homes in Japan, appears to have deep pockets to fund the expansion.

Universities looking to go global

Fostering global human resources seems all the rage these days and several Japanese universities are jumping in, opening their doors to foreign students who aren't proficient in Japanese in a bid to snatch top-class talent from around the world.


While the institutions prepare to make their programs attractive to foreign students, university officials say the private sector should also open up so these graduates will stay in Japan and embark on solid career paths.

Under the Global 30 project initiated by the education ministry last year, by the end of fiscal 2013 more than 130 undergraduate and graduate courses conducted completely in English will be launched at 13 universities acting as Japan's "global education hubs."

The schools, selected by the education ministry, include the University of Tokyo and Waseda, Keio, Meiji and Nagoya universities. Global 30 is one of the measures launched to achieve a goal set out in 2008 by then Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda to attract 300,000 foreign students a year by 2020.

Through this project alone, the number of foreign students at the 13 universities should reach 50,000 by fiscal 2020, a ministry report says. Another aim of Global 30 is to reverse the decline in Japanese studying abroad, raising it to 10,000 from 4,000 now.

The program will give each university subsidies of between ¥200 million and ¥400 million a year until fiscal 2013, and they are expected to make great strides in becoming more international.

Efforts include establishing at least one "taught-in-English" course in both the undergraduate and graduate levels, setting up one-stop information offices overseas, providing foreign students opportunities to learn Japanese language and culture, and increasing the number of foreign teachers.

"This is a big chance," said Yoshihito Watanabe, vice president of Nagoya University. "We had to internationalize regardless of the launch of Global 30. But now, with the funds from the government, we can take active steps" to make Japanese campuses more international.

Most of the universities have spent the last year preparing, so the majority of the new courses are scheduled to kick off this fall and over the next two academic years.

For example, Waseda University opened four undergraduate and five graduate English-only courses Tuesday and is scheduled to open another undergraduate course in 2011 and a graduate course in 2012.

Nagoya University is scheduled to start five undergraduate and six graduate courses in October 2011, aiming to raise its foreign enrollment, which was 1,214 in 2008, to 3,000 by the end of fiscal 2020.

Faculty members are promoting the school and recruiting students overseas, including in the United States, Europe, Australia, Mongolia and Singapore, visiting top high schools and setting up booths at major international education events, Watanabe said.

While the government and the universities may have high hopes for luring top-class foreign talent, the project, there are plenty of hurdles, experts say.

One concern is whether the idea is truly realistic.

"We are now doing the best we can. . . . Some faculty question whether foreign students will actually choose to study in a country where English is not the first language," Watanabe said. "But we will not accept students who aren't qualified just so we can fill the seats we have prepared."

Another university official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the schools will bear up even if only about 20 percent of the seats are filled the first year.

"The important thing is to provide high-quality education and build up its reputation. Then, hopefully, many (top-class) students will come forward through word of mouth," the official said.

Etsuko Katsu, vice president of Meiji University, said one of the keys to attracting foreign students is to provide something extra in the curriculum and to put an emphasis on Japan.

As an attempt, Meiji is scheduled to start an undergraduate course next year on modern Japanese culture, focusing on manga, "anime," video games and other aspects of the "Cool Japan" fad the government has been promoting overseas.

Katsu also stressed that the ultimate goal of the plan is to actually improve the level of Japanese research, not foreign enrollment. By raising the academic level, many first-class students will come naturally, she said.

Meanwhile, some critics have raised doubts about whether the private sector, which is where the demand for global students is coming from, will have jobs ready for them.

Shigeharu Kato, deputy director general of the Higher Education Bureau at the education ministry, said at a joint forum last month in Tokyo that it is critical to collaborate with the private sector.

"Cooperation between universities and business is vital" to Global 30's end results, Kato said.

The Global 30 University-Business Joint Forum brought together officials from the education and economy ministries, universities and corporations to exchange views on the globalization of higher education in Japan.

Executives from Rakuten Inc. and Sony Corp. at the forum expressed a strong desire to recruit first-class international students, but observers say most companies are still reluctant to follow suit.

Figures also show that there aren't enough jobs for foreign students.

According to a 2007 survey by the Japan Students Service Organization of privately funded international students attending Japanese universities, 61.3 percent said they would like to get a job in Japan. But only 30.6 percent of all foreign students who graduated in 2007 said they found a job in this country.

In the same year, 96.3 percent of Japanese undergraduate students looking for a job secured employment, according to the labor ministry.

"Top executives at large corporations say they will hire foreign students without Japanese-language proficiency, only if they are fluent in English and have excelled at the academic level. But in reality, they don't," said Watanabe of Nagoya University. "When such (top-class) students apply, the personnel division says they should have scored at least Level 2 on the Japanese Language Proficiency Test in order to have smooth communications."

Although all 13 schools will be offering Japanese classes for international students, Japanese corporations must realize they have to change their attitude and be more flexible about hiring foreign talent, Meiji University's Katsu said.

"(Japanese) corporations have to change. Unless the whole society changes, Japan can't survive in the globalized world," she said.

On top of these challenges, Global 30 is already suffering from a serious problem in its first year. Funding for the project was cut by around 20 percent through the "shiwake" budget screening process started last year by the Democratic Party of Japan-led government.

Another 17 core universities are supposed to be selected by 2013 to bring the total to 30, as the name of the project says, but it is likely to remain at 13 because of budget cuts, said Kazuki Fukuda, deputy director of the education ministry's Higher Education Bureau.

Watanabe said the budget cut is having a big impact but that Nagoya University will stick to its original plan.

"There are many factors in accepting foreign students. It is true that we want talented students from overseas, but I also hope the presence of ambitious and aggressive students will stimulate Japanese students, who tend to be inward-looking," he said, pointing out that fewer Japanese students are seeking to study overseas.

"By increasing the number of such foreign students (on campus), domestic students are forced to use English, and through creating (an international) environment, I think Japanese students will turn their eyes to the outside world," he said.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100923f1.html

Japan's Globalization Project Stalls as Some Criticize Focus on Elite Universities

As Japan watchers warn that the island nation is becoming more insular, the government's newest bid to internationalize Japan's stuffy higher-education system—the misnamed Global 30—is off to a wobbly start.

The goal was to recruit 30 universities and support their internationalization efforts. Beginning last year on a 3.2-billion-yen, or about $38-million, budget, the project aims to significantly increase the number of foreign students in the country and Japanese students studying abroad.

But the education ministry's tough selection criteria mean that just 13 elite universities have been chosen so far. Government cuts have already shaved up to 30 percent from the budget allocated to each institution. And the remaining 17 spots open to universities are unlikely to be filled, according to two administrators at universities in the exclusive club.

"It's disappointing," says Go Yoshida, a spokesman for the Office of International Strategic Planning at Nagoya University, one of the 13 selectees. "Quite honestly, Japan is late in the game of globalization in higher education. But the government's left hand doesn't know what its right hand is doing."

The stakes for this island nation are high. After more than two decades and billions of yen in scholarships, fewer than 4 percent of Japan's university students come from abroad—133,000, well below China, with 223,000, and the United States with 672,000. Just 5 percent of its 353,000 university teachers are foreign, according to ministry of education statistics. Most of those teach English.

At the opposite end of the education pendulum, students here are increasingly staying home: Japanese undergraduate enrollment in American universities has plummeted by more than half since 2000, estimates the ministry. Japanese student enrollment in European institutions is also down.

"Frankly, in my view Japan is going backwards," says Ian de Stains, executive director of the British Chamber of Commerce in Japan, and one of many observers who believe that despite government rhetoric about internationalization, Japan is becoming more isolationist. "The big danger is that Japan will lose touch and fail to compete globally."

South Korea, with less than half Japan's population, sends twice as many students to the United States. At some American universities, such as Cornell, the number of Japanese students is behind not just the number from China, India, and South Korea, but even from Thailand and tiny Singapore. "The drop is without precedent," says Mark Selden, a senior fellow at Cornell's East Asia program.

Global 30 is supposed to partly remedy those ills, helping Japan reach a government goal of 300,000 foreign students by 2020, while sending the same number of Japanese students abroad.

Participating universities receive an annual grant of 200-400 million yen (between $2.4-million and $4.8-million) annually for five years to employ foreign faculty members and English-speaking support staff, and to create new all-English undergraduate courses. Each university is also required to set up offices outside Japan, both to recruit locally and help Japanese students study in other countries.

Japan's education ministry hopes that its modest commitment will help transform the country's academic landscape by luring more international students and generating more collaboration between foreign and Japanese professors.

"We think those universities will set an example for other colleges by leading with good practice," says Shigeharu Kato, deputy director of the Higher Education Bureau at the ministry. "This practice will then diffuse to other colleges around the country."

With Japan's population falling and dozens of private colleges facing bankruptcy, the government has little choice but to look beyond the country's borders. Education specialists agree that tripling the intake of foreign students will expose their Japanese counterparts to the world, and could help create a cadre of foreign academics who studied in Japan.

But while praising the Global 30 program, some are questioning its focus on elite universities. Priority was given to large institutions with proven research capacity, such as the University of Tokyo and the private Waseda University, says Akiyoshi Yonezawa, an associate professor at the Center for the Advancement of Higher Education in Tohoku University—another of the 13 selected institutions.

Tough Demands
"Smaller and midsized institutions, despite satisfying many of the strong international criteria, were eliminated from the selection process," he says. He adds that some of the country's best universities, such as the Tokyo Institute of Technology, were driven away from the program by its demands, which included raising the percentage of international students to 20 percent and the share of international professors to 10 percent by 2020.

Paul Snowden, dean of Waseda's School of International Liberal Studies, says that institutions that have achieved success attracting international students should have been rewarded for their efforts but instead were disqualified for having already met the ministry's goals.

Half of the students at Mr. Snowden's institution are from abroad, he says. But despite this accomplishment, three other Waseda faculties—the departments of political science; economics, science, and engineering; and social sciences — were selected for the Global 30.

"It was flattering, but disappointing, that basically our curriculum had been imitated by the ministry and disseminated to other places, but we weren't allowed any of the money," Mr. Snowden says.

He questions whether the ratio the School of International Liberal Studies has achieved can be replicated by others. "I'm pretty sure that extreme case is not going to be achieved by more than a handful of institutions in Japan, though."

Despite the concerns about the new program, Mr. Kato of the education ministry says Global 30 is now taking off and is "almost at cruising altitude." And there are some signs to support that.

Nagoya University's Mr. Yoshida says the roughly $3.5-million it received has helped the institution raise its intake of foreign undergraduate and graduate students by 170, and open new offices in Germany and Uzbekistan.

Yet the colleges and the ministry have been frustrated by cost cutting ordered by the Democratic Party of Japan government, which took power last year just after Global 30 was approved. Nagoya's government support, for example, will shrink by 27 percent in its next fiscal year, which starts in April. "We're just starting to launch this and the cuts have come. And we fear more are due," says Mr. Yoshida.

Some believe that the government may be switching priorities to a separate effort called Campus Asia, which is intended to harmonize China, Japan, and South Korea's colleges and ultimately keep more students in the region. A working group from each of the countries is set to meet in China this year, with the project officially starting in April.

Little Fiscal Legroom
With the worst public debt in the industrialized world—900 trillion yen, or $10.6-trillion—Japan has much less fiscal legroom than its competitors. That is likely to mean careful scrutiny of all education spending and a demand that colleges and the education ministry deliver more bang for the government's buck.

Even if this year's cuts were reversed and the government met its financial commitments to Global 30, Mr. Yonezawa of Tohoku University and others doubt that the student targets are attainable without major reform outside the education system. "It is impossible to achieve this sort of internationalization only with Global 30," he says, adding that Japan needs to focus on its second- and third-tier colleges. He also urges major changes in the labor markets and among Japan's conservative companies to give foreign graduates an incentive to stay and work in the country.

Despite these looming issues, Waseda's Mr. Snowden is among many who believe that Japan is still in the race. "Japan is indeed late in the game. But with much interest from Korea and China, I think it can find a new role as an international education base" within the region.

http://chronicle.com/article/A-Slow-Start-for-Japans/124346/

New financial assistance program to encourage more students to study abroad

The government is set to introduce a new program that will encourage more students to study abroad by giving them financial assistance to stay overseas for a short period of time, it has been learned.

The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology is launching what it has dubbed a "short visit" program from next fiscal year to boost the number of students who study abroad. It plans to dispatch 7,000 students overseas for a short stay in fiscal 2011. The ministry will include 1.7 billion yen for the program in its budget requests for next fiscal year.

According to the ministry, the number of university students studying abroad had been on the increase until around 1999, but has since declined to an annual 80,000 or so as students are said to be getting more "inward-looking." Even the United States, which is the most popular destination for Japanese students, hosted 30 percent fewer students from Japan in 2008 than in 2004.

While the ministry currently provides a one-year or longer study abroad program, it receives only three times the number of applications as seats available. In a bid to encourage more students to go abroad, the ministry will solicit students who are willing to stay overseas for a period of two weeks to three months so they can get a taste of what an overseas education is like.

Undergraduate students at certain universities -- which have student exchange programs with counterparts overseas and will offer students credits even for a short stay abroad -- will be given financial assistance of up to 80,000 yen for their living costs abroad per month and up to 80,000 yen for one-way airfares.

The ministry's latest white paper on science and technology has pointed out that researchers with overseas experience are more productive, conducting international joint research and coauthoring papers with foreign counterparts, and that the recent trend of Japanese youths becoming more "inward-looking" threatens to undermine Japan's competitiveness in the international community. The government has advocated introducing 300,000 Japanese students into international exchange programs by 2020.

Furthermore, the ministry plans to boost exchanges among universities in Japan, China and South Korea through credit transfers and joint diplomas, allocating about 2 billion yen for the "Campus Asia initiative" in its budget requests for next fiscal year.

Behind the trend of fewer students venturing abroad to study lies the widespread use of the Internet in getting overseas information easily and students' concerns that studying abroad could delay their job hunting activities.

"Some may say our new program is offering too much for students, but students won't be motivated to go abroad and study unless given financial assistance and credit transfers are provided as they face a tight job market," said an official with the ministry.

"Japanese youths lack ambition nowadays. We want to lift their spirits," said Senior Vice Minister of Education Masaharu Nakagawa.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/news/20100906p2a00m0na014000c.html

Saving Japan's universities

The consensus says Japanese university students are lazy and apathetic. Unfavorable comparisons are made with Chinese studying here. Yet those same students at their annual autumn festivals can show an enthusiasm, professionalism and attention to detail superior to anything at a Western university, or a Chinese university for that matter.

When I try to find the reason for all this effort, the main reply is mokuteki tassei kan, or the feeling of having achieved something.

This, I suggest, is the key problem with the education system here. It does not provide that feeling of achievement, for several reasons. One is that Japan by nature is not a very intellectual society. The value of abstract learning for its own sake is weakly realized. In the science or engineering departments, students apply themselves. The problems are mainly in the liberal arts faculties.

Japan's groupism is another problem. Failing weak or lazy students and having them expelled from the allegedly warm and cozy bosom of the university group is almost impossible, both practically and psychologically.

Teachers, too, try to retain their group identity by playing up to students. The result is a version of the old communist regime joke that said the workers pretended to work and the bosses pretended to pay them. Here in Japan, often it is that teachers pretend to teach and students pretend to study.

Some mid-ranking universities show more responsibility. But at elite universities, horror stories of student and teacher negligence abound. Both assume that status imparts impunity. Some ex-students boast how they graduated without doing a day of serious study.

A key theme in the several Ministry of Education committees I attended during the 1990s was that universities should grade students strictly. But how can you force teachers to provide strict grades in the first place? In any case the worst that can happen to students with poor grades is to have them repeat a year — something most universities prefer to avoid.

I never managed to get a serious answer to these points. The bureaucrats were part of the same conspiracy, I concluded.

Employers are equally guilty. Most do their recruiting well before final grades are available. Many just assume graduates from elite universities are superior. In a top businessman's committee back in those days — when education reform was a popular topic — I recall a well-known industry captain saying how poor grades could prove the student had the sense not to waste time on irrelevant university study.

Today things could be getting even worse. For as student numbers decline, and university numbers increase, standards will tend to fall even more as more universities compete for fewer students.

But all is not lost. Parents are increasingly reluctant to pay out large sums to irresponsible universities so their children can enjoy four years of "leisure-land" existence as it is often called. They are turning to the mid-ranking universities that make efforts to improve. Some more enlightened enterprises also now seek graduates from those universities.

But how do you prove that you have improved? The current fad is an emphasis on English teaching, with the TOEFL or TOEIC results for English exams used as objective standards. An experimental university with which I am involved has done quite well on that basis. For many firms, English ability is now useful in employment. But should those English exams be the main standard of student and teaching excellence?

Ultimately it comes back to inserting proper motivation into the classroom. Currently the demand is for teachers to make their classes more "enjoyable." So teachers have to become like song and dance artists?

There is only one sensible answer — provide clear, across-the-board incentives that give students the sense of achievement they crave. Tests and exams are of little use when the aim of most teachers and universities is simply to hand out pass marks and get rid of repeaters.

Some years back I tried to promote a scheme called "provisional entry." Students who just failed to pass university entrance tests could be accepted for one year and confirmed as regular students if their first-year results were good. Even though the scheme was endorsed by the 1999 national conference on education reform, few have shown interest. Yet the one university that has tried the scheme has found that almost all the provisional students do as well as or better than the first-year regular students.

Japan's closed academic world needs to discover what almost every Western university knows — that if the carrot of self-improvement is not enough to make people study then it has to be the whip of failure. This means failure to graduate, and failure to find a good job. That kind of incentive does wonders to clarify the mind and spur motivation. Ideally every student in Japan should be "provisional," and not just for one year.

Such a scheme would also provide the badly needed motivation to encourage less academically minded school graduates to seek technical education rather than waste time at universities.

As for the current emphasis on English to prove academic excellence, obviously it does no harm. But with bad teachers — either those retreaded high school teachers unable to speak English properly or the grammar-obsessed Ph.D.s for example — often the teaching simply reinforces the bad English being taught in middle and high schools. Far better to have the language taught intensively as part of a double degree — economics and English, for example — to students who choose it and really want to use it in their future careers. Here the motivation factor is guaranteed. Meanwhile, other languages, Chinese especially, could also be taught on the same double degree basis. Japan does not have to survive on English alone.

Gregory Clark is formerly president of Tama University and vice president of Akita International University. A Japanese translation of this article will appear on www.gregoryclark.net. His book "Naze Nihon no Kyoiku wa kawaranai no desuka?" was published by Toyo Keizai in 2003.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20100817gc.html

Foreign Caregivers’ Language Exam Triggers Debate

TOKYO, Aug 11, 2010 (IPS) - Wahyudin dreams of becoming a full-fledged caregiver, if not a certified nurse, in Japan. But the Indonesian worker must first pass the required Japanese-language national certification examination, which is far from easy.

Until then the 29-year-old Wahyudin, a registered nurse in his home country, will remain a caregiver trainee in an elderly-care facility in Yamada city in western Tokushima prefecture, where he has worked since arriving in Japan two years ago.

"It's a long shot but there is no other way I can push my career forward and build a stable future (unless I pass the test)," Wahyudin, who uses one name, says of the examination.

Passing it would give him the professional caregiver status that would allow him to be hired by any hospital or nursing home in Japan. He can also expect higher compensation packages.

The language examination is designed to ensure integration into Japanese society and meet professional standards, but few foreigners manage to pass it. Now, those who work with the elderly in one of the world’s fastest ageing societies say it is time to take a second look at this requirement, given Japan’s rapidly growing need for caregivers, many of whom come from overseas.

"Expecting foreign caregivers and nurses to pass the difficult examination in Japanese is unfair and smacks of discrimination," said Tsutomu Fukuma, spokesman for the Japanese Council of Senior Citizens Welfare Service, a leading nursing care provider.

"The system has disappointed them and many are giving up on staying in Japan, which is not what we want," he says.

As it is, the Health and Welfare Ministry says the number of Japanese caregivers, most of them middle-aged, is declining. There were 350,000 workers in the healthcare system in 2009, down from 400,000 three years ago. Younger Japanese are not entering the sector.

At the same time, Japan has 13 million people aged over 75, or 10 percent of its population of 127 million. In 2025, that age group is projected to grow to 22 million people -- and the government predicts that the country will need more than two million caregivers by then.

This is why Japan has been turning to foreign caregivers, but they are not finding it easy to stay for too long in the country. At present, foreign nurses and caregivers are allowed to work in Japan for a maximum of three and four years, respectively. During this period, they must study Japanese and pass the certifying examination that they can take only once.

Because Japan is officially a closed labour market to foreigners, it has different agreements with countries that allow a certain number of ‘trainees’ each year to come work for specified periods of time.

Wahyudin, for instance, came under an economic partnership agreement (EPA) signed between Japan and Indonesia in 2008. A similar pact was signed with the Philippines, another major provider of caregivers here, in 2006.

There are 570 Indonesians and 310 Filipinos working in nursing or elder homes in Japan. A total of 254 have taken the nursing examination, but only three – two Indonesians and one Filipino – have passed and acquired full-time employment status.

Among others, caregivers and nurses seeking professional certification in Japan are lobbying the government to allow foreign examinees to use dictionaries during the test to help them with unfamiliar technical terms and ‘Kanji’ or Chinese characters, one of three scripts used in the Japanese language, or Nihongo.

But beyond the examination itself, caregivers rue the limited time they have to study the language.

"It’s really hard for us to reach the level of language facility needed to successfully sit for the exam," says Wahyudin, who has just an hour or so a day to review his Nihongo owing to his busy work schedule. He is getting formal language training, but he says this is far from adequate even with the six- month government-subsidised language course.

The situation of the elderly in Japan also reflects changing norms that have seen more young adults living away from their ageing parents. In fact, the number of Japanese who are over 65 years old, living alone and with no one to look after them, numbered more than 4.6 million as of June 2009.

To many, this highlights even more the need for more caregivers, but not everyone agrees.

Prof Keiko Higuchi, a member of the government panel of welfare advisors, says Japan’s caregiving system instead encourage the elderly to lead more independent lives. "I am not against accepting foreign caregivers or nurses. But before we start opening the doors (to them), Japan must ensure that its nursing care for the elderly continues to focus on helping them to help themselves," she explains.

Yukiko Okuma, a well-known author on nursing care for the elderly, sees as quick fixes Japan’s EPAs with Indonesia and the Philippines. "The EPA with Indonesia is a quick remedy for the labour shortage we face in the welfare sector. As a result we now have a system which faces the risk of lowering Japan’s nursing standards to accommodate more Asian nationals who are themselves not treated fairly under the scheme," she points out.

Okuma adds that today’s situation is also a product of a society where women, especially wives and daughters-in-law, have traditionally taken care of ageing parents, leading to "a poorly recognised and underfinanced welfare system" in Japan.

"Japan’s welfare for the elderly must be viewed as a national priority, where workers are treated well by giving them good salaries, paid vacations and other employment benefits, whether they are Japanese or Asians," she says.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52451

14 officials to study in Japan under JDS

A total of 14 Bangladeshi young government officials will leave for Japan next month to study for two years under Japan Development Scholarship (JDS), says a press release.

They will study in Japan for two years to obtain Master's degrees in various fields.

A send-off ceremony for the JDS fellows was held on Monday at the Japanese Ambassador's residence.

Japanese ambassador Tamotsu Shinotsuka encouraged JDS fellows to keep in mind that both Bangladeshi and Japanese people expect a great deal from them for the development of their own country through making the best use of knowledge and experience that will be acquired in Japan.

The formal title of the Scholarship is "The Japanese Grant Aid for Human Resource Development Scholarship (JDS)." It was established by the Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh with the assistance of the Government of Japan in the year 2001.

JDS will contribute to enhancing the knowledge and skills of young Bangladeshi people so that they can play leading roles in the development of Bangladesh after completion of their studies.

http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=147690

Vietnamese students fill niche at Japanese firms

Vietnam has been getting a lot of attention from Japanese companies thanks to its rising middle class and plans for large-scale development projects, such as nuclear power plants and railway systems. More and more Japanese companies are interested in hiring Vietnamese employees to do businesses in the country.

For such firms, there are potential employees already living in Japan, as an increasing number of students from Vietnam are studying here, helping to create a bridge between the two countries.

Last month, Tran Minh Hue, a postgraduate student at Kobe University, traveled all the way to Tokyo to attend a job event aimed exclusively at Vietnamese wanting to work for Japanese companies after completing their education this academic year.

The 28-year-old joined 15 other students who traveled to Shinagawa Ward from as far away as Fukushima and Kita-Kyushu. The event was unlike regular job fairs, where students visit booths for companies they are interested in. Instead, the Vietnamese sat at several desks and talked about themselves whenever they were approached by corporate recruiters.

"I'm a logical thinker and I'm comfortable speaking in front of others," Hue said in fluent Japanese during her presentation. She also discussed the variety of volunteer activities in which she has been engaged during her two years in Japan.

At the job event, the 16 students were brought together with four companies, with each interview session lasting 20 minutes.

Nguyen Manh Hung, a postgraduate student at Fukui University, said he wants to work in Japan "to take advantage of the cutting-edge knowledge I've acquired here." In the future, the 26-year-old added, "I hope to find a new business opportunity in my country and make it into something big."

The event was the second organized by G.A. Consultants Co. in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo. The first one took place in April and attracted 15 students. Since its establishment in 1995, the employment agency has helped bring together graduates of Vietnamese universities and Japanese companies. In 2008, it started a business focusing on the increasing number of Vietnamese studying in Japan.

The number of students from the country reached 3,199 last year, double the number recorded in 2004, according to the Japan Student Services Organization. Although they accounted for just 2.4 percent of the overall foreign student body of nearly 133,000, they have now formed the fourth-largest group after China, South Korea and Taiwan.

The two events attracted a total of nine companies--from information technology to construction and real estate--most of which are already doing businesses in Vietnam or are keen to do so.

At the June event, Yoshinori Tamaki, president of Saitama Prefecture-based car dealer GlobanNet Co., was looking for his firm's first foreign employee. "I'd like to start up a business there, probably beginning with a restaurant."

The president has spent a lot of time visiting Vietnam, during which time he has discovered attractive factors such as its growing population and political stability. "I've also found the people are hard-working and really smart," he added.

Osaka-based Fine Co. also was looking for a candidate to manage an office it plans to open in Vietnam next year. The diet supplement manufacturer has been inspired by the country's rich natural resources.

"We'd like to develop ingredients for our products there," Executive Vice President Nobutsuna Sasaki said. "In China, ingredients have been getting more and more expensive recently."

Hung started his job-hunting in February. One difficulty he is facing is "finding the information I want among so many companies in Japan," such as which ones want to hire foreign students.

Vietnamese students also tend to struggle with a lack of Japanese-language skills and the peculiar job-hunting practices in Japan--such as starting efforts more than a year before graduation--according to Dang Quang Duy, vice president of the Vietnamese Youths and Students Association in Japan (VYSA) and a postgraduate student at Tokyo Institute of Technology.

VYSA, formed in 2001, organizes job fairs and briefing sessions on how to find work, while also posting employment opportunities on its Web site.

"Most Vietnamese students in Japan want to work here for a while before going back home," said the 26-year-old, who has received a job offer from a major Japanese company.

Yet the reality is that many of them have had to go home because they cannot find a job here--a situation that Masaaki Ando, G.A.'s general manager, describes as a "shame" for the country.

To help the two events bring about as high "matching rates" as possible, G.A. screened its applicants, narrowing them down to 31--based on factors such as their Japanese-language skills and personalities--and taught them how to make proper presentations during interviews.

More than half of the interviewees advanced to the next round of screening, and some from the first event eventually received a job offer.

"Although they're brilliant and willing to work as a bridge between [Vietnam and] Japan, many of them haven't been given a chance to do so," he said. "I'd really like [more Japanese firms] to give them a chance."

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/language/20100715TDY15T02.htm

Japanese seen as 'critical' in U.S. language program

Thirty students from the U.S. traveled to Kyoto last month under a new U.S. government initiative to boost the country’s number of Japanese speakers, to make the country more competitive globally.

The student trip was sponsored by the U.S. State Department as part of its Critical Language Scholarship Program, known as CLS, a government initiative aimed at improving the foreign language skills of U.S. citizens.

The two-month program gives undergraduate and graduate students from across the country the opportunity to study Japanese in intensive, full-immersion environments at Doshisha University and Kyoto University.

Japanese was added to the CLS program for the first time this year since it started in 2006 under the administration of former President George W Bush, in line with the launch of the National Security Language Initiative, a scheme to increase the study of languages considered vital to U.S. national security.

In the program’s first years, scholarships were offered for Arabic, Pashtun, Korean and other languages that are rarely studied in the United States but are considered to be of strategic importance by the U.S. military and intelligence communities.

But the program has gradually expanded to include languages that are more broadly relevant to U.S. global interests, including trade and finance, and Japanese was chosen this year.

Susan Schmidt, an expert on Japanese language acquisition at the Association of Teachers of Japanese, believes that including Japanese in this year’s program reflects the changing attitudes of U.S. policymakers about what makes a language “critical.”

“I think what happened probably is that in the State Department, it was felt that that definition of critical, as in important for national security or national purposes, that that definition should be expanded a little bit, beyond the strictly military context,” Schmidt said.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Academic Programs Alina Romanowski said that CLS selects “challenging, difficult languages in places where we know there’s economic opportunity, we have long-term bilateral security interests and where to be proficient in that language takes time.”

The program comes at a time that some describe as a fraught period in Japan-U.S. relations, when the outlook of bilateral ties has grown uncertain due to a change in Japan’s political leadership and a dispute over the fate of a U.S. Marine base in Okinawa.

The decision to include Japanese in the CLS program, however, was made well before the current tensions began, Romanowski noted. “It’s a very important relationship. . . . It made sense that we would end up including Japanese,” she said.

In fact, in its decision to add Japanese to the CLS program, the State Department seems to be riding a growing wave of interest in the study of Japanese within the U.S.

The number of American students studying Japanese has more than doubled over the last two decades and continues to increase steadily, according to a 2006 report on foreign language study in the U.S. conducted every four years by the Modern Language Association.

Schmidt believes this interest has been primarily driven by student interest in Japanese cultural exports, noting that ” ‘manga’ cartoons and animated films and the video games are a fairly big motivation for students.”

Once their interest has been sparked, Schmidt said, these students increasingly put their Japanese to use in their studies.

“A lot of students in the sciences now are interested in learning Japanese and studying in Japan,” she said.

Schmidt’s assessment was confirmed at an orientation session for the CLS program held in Washington in early June, where participants said that although Japanese culture was what initially interested them in the language, they see it as an important tool for their future, whether in international business, diplomacy or the sciences.

“Before the large ‘anime’ boom around the early 2000s, I had never even heard of Japan,” said Tiarra Beaver, a 19-year-old student at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, who now hopes to work with Japanese immigrants as they adjust to life in the U.S.

While not discounting the attraction of Japanese culture, Ryan Seebruck, a 27-year-old graduate student at the University of Arizona, sees the Japanese language as “critical” for a more pragmatic reason.

“Japan will undoubtedly remain a top economic power for a long time,” Seebruck said.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/lifestyle/view/japanese-seen-as-critical-in-us-language-program

Firms to boost foreigner hiring

Fast Retailing Co., Lawson Inc. and Rakuten Inc. are planning to boost hiring of foreign nationals by up to 50 percent of their new recruits in fiscal 2011, officials of the companies said Tuesday.

Because they are expanding global operations, especially in emerging markets in Asia, amid shrinking domestic sales, the three companies are accelerating operations to hire Asian graduates in their home countries and those studying at Japanese universities.

The firms hope to promote them to company executives in the future to lead their operations in the Asian markets, the officials said.

Fast Retailing, the operator of the Uniqlo casual clothing chain, said it is planning to hire about 300 foreigners, which would account for about 50 percent of its planned new recruits for the year starting next April.

The company hopes to hire people who can work on its plan to open more shops in China and those who can serve as shop managers in Malaysia and Taiwan, where it plans to open its first outlets.

President Tadashi Yanai said the hiring rate of foreign employees will be increased in fiscal 2012, with a plan for up to two-thirds of 1,000 planned new recruits to be foreigners.

Major convenience store change Lawson is boosting recruitment of foreign students graduating from Japanese universities. It will continue hiring about 20 percent to 30 percent of its new recruits from Asian countries, it said. It has already hired 66 foreign graduates in three years from fiscal 2008, accounting for 20 percent of all the new recruits.

Rakuten, which operates the largest Internet mall in Japan, said it will hire 150 foreigners among 600 new recruits it plans to employ in fiscal 2011.

It has agreed with China's top Internet search engine Baidu Inc. to form a joint venture to launch an online mall in China in the second half of this year and hopes to utilize Chinese engineers to come up with services attracting customers in the Chinese market.

Panasonic Corp. has also been boosting its employment of foreigners.

In fiscal 2011, it plans to increase the number of such employees to 1,100, up by 50 percent from the previous year, the company said.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20100707a1.html

Japan urged to keep program to invite foreign language instructors

A Japan-U.S. panel drawn from government, business and academia called Friday for sustaining a program to invite English and other foreign language instructors to Japan, challenging a Japanese government view, expressed earlier this year, questioning the necessity of the project as part of a review of unnecessary public projects.

The U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange, which is known as CULCON, said in a joint statement issued after its two-day gathering in Washington that investment should be made in education for the Japan-U.S. alliance in the future.

"The investment should range from improving English language education in Japan to stimulating interest in each other's country...sustaining the JET program and fostering public intellectuals through graduate and post-doctoral studies," the statement said. JET stands for the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program.

Minoru Makihara, senior corporate adviser and former chairman of Mitsubishi Corp. and chair of the Japan panel, told a news conference that participants noted the importance of fostering Americans familiar with Japan amid growing interest in China among Americans.

The participants also discussed ways to increase the number of Japanese students studying in the United States and the importance of promoting grass-roots exchanges.

Michael Green, former senior director for Asian affairs at the U.S. National Security Council, said, "The story of popular views of Americans and Japanese towards each other is very positive," despite difficulties over the base row in Okinawa.

The bilateral conference was set up in 1961 in a joint statement of former Japanese Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda and U.S. President John F. Kennedy. This year marked the 24th biennial meeting.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9G9ESR01&show_article=1

King of the Hill: Ritsumeikan Aisa Pacific U. scores high in recruiting foreign students, but can it show the way ahead to Japan's struggling colleges

Nestled near the top of a mountain in southern Japan and shrouded in fog, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University would never win a prize for accessibility.

Yet this 10-year-old private college boasts something its rivals in Japan have struggled to achieve: a genuine international campus. Nearly half of its 6,200 students are non-Japanese, the highest ratio of any university in the country. In addition, the institution is on the way to achieving its goal of recruiting half the faculty from abroad. Currently, 44 percent of the professors and academics are from outside the island nation.

"I was amazed when I arrived here first," says the institution's president, Shun Korenaga, who took up his position in January. "Such a campus is quite unique."

Founded by the Kyoto-based Ritsumeikan University to be an international institution, Asia Pacific is officially bilingual—English and Japanese—and has students from nearly 100 countries, mostly from East Asia.

Chinese and Koreans alone account for well over half of the student body. The university has managed to skirt an unspoken rule at many Japanese colleges—that local students would perceive such a large foreign enrollment as a drop in academic quality, and stop coming.

"We don't have that problem," says Mr. Korenaga. "The quality of Chinese and Korean students is very high."

Japan took nearly two decades to achieve a government target of 100,000 foreign students and now wants to triple that figure, amid a declining population and plummeting local student enrollment. Nearly half of the country's private colleges are falling below government-set student quotas.

College administrators have been studying Asia Pacific's success for clues to boost their own non-Japanese enrollment. The answers don't come cheap, or easy.

Asia Pacific has built what it calls the largest student dormitory in Japan, a 1,300-bed facility that responds to a perennial problem here: the scarcity of reliable, inexpensive accommodation that will accept foreigners.

According to Mr. Korenaga, the university has also introduced a scholarship system that waives 30 to 100 percent of the college's almost $14,000 annual tuition for roughly 70 percent of its students. The waiver is paid for by a $43-million endowment from a coalition of 200 companies, created when the university was set up.

Ritsumeikan's network of offices around the region also helps it to recruit students directly from high schools in China, Vietnam, Thailand, and elsewhere. And Asia Pacific's location, which is closer to China and the Korean peninsula than to Tokyo, probably helps, too.

The campus works hard at integrating different nationalities, putting 600 Japanese and foreign freshmen together at its large dorm and hosting one of Japan's biggest annual job fairs in a bid to keep more foreign graduates in the country. It also makes the most of its striking location, overlooking the resort city here.

"I like it here because it's quiet and pretty compared to Shanghai," says Pinkie Wang, a Chinese student studying for a master's degree in international relations. "We can also meet people from other countries, study other cultures, and we can learn English and Japanese, so we graduate with three languages."

Some European students are less enthusiastic.

"There's a reason they put us on the top of a mountain—to force us to interact," quips Pierre Mattisson, a third-year undergraduate exchange student from Sweden.

He says students should think hard about the out-of-the-way location before coming. "I like it, but I chose it because it is just for four months. That allows me to sample Japan, outside Tokyo. If it was four years I wouldn't have chosen it."

Despite its efforts, Asia Pacific still doesn't have what its president calls a regional "brand image" like the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, in South Korea, or the University of Tokyo, though it does have a growing reputation in Asia for the caliber of its teaching. Nor does it have a strong research presence, which is essential for a quality university, Mr. Korenaga admits.

The Ministry of Education, which provides about 13 percent of the university's budget, "wants to divide universities into research and teaching institutions, but I don't agree with that policy," he says.

The institution must also come to grips with a slow, long-term decline in applications from domestic students, the president says. "In Japan, students prefer to go to public universities, to study cheaply, and to study close to home. We break all three rules."

In addition, he says, the gap in abilities among Japanese students is very wide. "Some students want to study at a truly international college, but not everyone. And to survive we will sometimes accept rather low-level students."

Asia Pacific's lessons in internationalization for Japan, if there are any, have become more pressing in recent years. Japanese students are increasingly opting to stay at home; undergraduate enrollment by Japanese citizens in U.S. universities has plunged 52 percent since 2000.

In the same decade, U.S. enrollment of students from China is up 164 percent, and from India, 190 percent. South Korea, with less than half of Japan's population, sends two and a half times as many students to U.S. colleges.

Against such figures, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's pledge to make Japan a leader in the putative community of East Asian nations looks hollow, writes Glen S. Fukushima, chief executive of Airbus Japan, in a recent article in The Japan Times. "Reversing this trend of insularity should be a high priority if the Hatoyama government wishes Japan to play the positive and constructive global role it has the potential to do."

Mr. Korenaga shares that concern. "Japan is swaying between independence and alliances, becoming more closed and introverted." Still, he remains positive that, like the college he runs, the nation will embrace a global outlook and diversity. "We have to select the more internationalized trend," he says. "We don't have a choice."
http://chronicle.com/article/King-of-the-Hill-Ritsumeikan/65739/

Online job service planned / Web site to link soon-to-be university grads and small to midsize firms

The Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry and the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry will start a joint online service Tuesday to link job-seeking university students set to graduate next spring and small and midsize companies looking to hire them.

The ministry and the chamber will launch a Web site named Dream Match Project, to be operated by Recruit Co., for the service. It will act as an online meeting place for job-hunting students, who are having extreme difficulty finding jobs amid the current economic slump, and small and midsize employers who cannot spend much money on recruiting and are struggling to hire talented young workers.

The ministry and the chamber aim to eliminate mismatches between companies and potential employees. Student users will be able to input such data as the industries and locations where they desire to work, and the Web site will display small and midsize companies matching those conditions. At students' request, firms will e-mail such information as the schedules of their recruiting sessions.

The service would also help presidents of small and midsize companies meet students in person when the presidents are on business trips to such locations as Tokyo.

The project is designed to help small and midsize companies recruit people newly graduated from universities when the firms start looking for employees after many major companies have finished their recruitment in May.

Students currently have limited means of collecting information about companies in areas they are not originally from.

The government's regional labor bureaus organize recruiting sessions for such companies and students. But students have to pay their own travel and hotel expenses, and it is difficult for students to spend a long time with individual companies.

Students also often complain it is difficult to attend multiple sessions because it takes time to travel from one place to another.

Using the planned Web site, students in Tokyo will be able to obtain information about companies in Sapporo or Fukuoka without incurring travel expenses.

The ministry and the chamber plan to post information of about 2,500 companies with 300 or fewer employees. No registration fee will be charged students or companies.

The Web site will continue to operate through January, and the ministry and the chamber expect 1,000 students to find jobs through it.

According to observers, an increasing number of university students want to join major companies or find stable jobs.

"Students who witnessed how hard job-hunting was last year are likely to expand their target range," a Recruit official said. "By providing more contacts with small and midsize companies, we aim to increase student choices."

As the first step, Recruit plans to recommend the about 600,000 students who use its job-hunting service register with the Web site, to help eliminate mismatches by providing more contacts between students and small and midsize companies.

According to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry and other sources, only 80 percent of university graduates this spring had secured jobs as of February. This was 6.3 percentage points lower than in the same month in the previous year and the worst figure since 2000.

Recruit said the ratio of job offers to job seekers for university and graduate students who will graduate next spring is 0.47 in major companies with 5,000 or more employees.

However, the ratio in small and midsize companies is 4.41, indicating that the smaller companies are facing a dire labor shortage.

Observers say small and midsize companies are not active in releasing job information, and students tend to shun small and midsize firms, irrespective of the jobs they actually offer.

(May. 17, 2010)
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/business/T100516001767.htm