A foreigner-friendly field of dreams?

By JAY KLAPHAKE

In the 1989 Oscar-nominated fantasy-drama film "Field of Dreams," the main character, a farmer played by Kevin Costner, heard a voice that kept whispering the phrase "If you build it, he will come." The Voice urged Costner's character to take a leap of faith and build a baseball diamond in the middle of an Iowa cornfield.

It would seem that about five years ago the Voice relocated from Iowa to Japan, where its refrain, "Build it, they will come," was heard by bureaucrats at the justice and education ministries, as well as by many universities, when they approved the opening of 68 (later to become 74) new law schools as part of legal education reform. The new system was pushed through in response to a 2001 Justice System Reform Council report that proclaimed the need for Japan to "create a justice system for the 21st century," in part to "internationalize the training of lawyers."

Fast-forward to today and you would be hard-pressed to hear anyone in Japan utter "internationalize" and "law school" in the same sentence. Instead, because of low bar exam pass rates, the word is that law schools are producing unqualified graduates.

However, contrary to the critics, the problem with the bar passage rate does not lie with the quality of the new law school graduates or the education they received. In reality, the exam is just a spigot, and the opponents of change now have their hands on the valve. By sabotaging the promised increase in the bar passage rate, they have undermined the successful implementation of legal education reform, and the unfortunate result is that many law schools are in danger of turning into little more than overpriced cram schools for the bar exam.

Last year, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, along with 13 select universities, launched the ambitious and well-intentioned "Global 30" Project for Establishing Core Universities for Internationalization. Apparently, the mischievous Voice decided to extend its visa in Japan (let's hope it doesn't apply for permanent residence). New faculties, programs, graduate schools and dormitories are quickly being built in the hope that "they will come." One can't help but wonder what, if anything, Japan has learned from the law school debacle.

In last week's Zeit Gist column, Chris Burgess concluded that "the contradictory nature of the (Global 30) project's goals suggests successful implementation will be problematic." But even assuming the goals are perfect, there is still a high probability that many of the 13 universities will ultimately fail to successfully implement them. Just as the law school reforms have been sabotaged, the Global 30 programs easily can fall prey to similar interference by the opponents of change. Even before the 13 universities were selected, Global 30 proposals encountered strong resistance from conservative faculty within the candidate institutions, and there is no reason to believe that will go away.

To put it simply, the fundamental barrier to world-class status for Japanese universities is that many faculty members just aren't that enthusiastic about welcoming large numbers of international teaching staff and students as anything more than visitors.

Whatever the enthusiasm deficit, the reality is that the most successful universities in the world need to attract the best students and faculty. Japan's neighbors, South Korea and China, have come to understand this, and their top universities are now progressively moving to internationalize their curricula and teaching staff. As a result, Japanese universities that once aspired to world-class status may soon find themselves increasingly falling behind their Asian neighbors. If this trend is ignored, they also run the risk that Japan's most talented students and researchers may decide to leave Japan, skipping the Japanese system entirely in their search for top-quality global higher education.

An analysis of the QS World University Rankings shows that the weakest indicator of Japanese universities compared to other world-class centers of learning is the proportion of international faculty (the second-weakest indicator is the percentage of international students, so the Global 30 Project, if successful, should yield higher rankings for Japanese universities). According to QS data, at top-ranked Harvard and second-placed Cambridge, international faculty make up between one-third and half of the full-time teaching staff. In Asia, the ratio of international faculty at leading universities such as the University of Hong Kong and National University of Singapore is also about 50-50. At Japan's most-highly ranked institution, Tokyo University, the ratio is a dismal one-in-16.

Despite bold initial pledges by many Global 30 institutions to attract "top class" talent and significantly increase the number of international faculty, the most recent evidence points to only halfhearted efforts in this direction. A look at the first round of Global 30 job postings on the Japan Research Career Information Network Web site reveals that, so far, most of the 13 universities selected to be centers of internationalization are only interested in employing non-Japanese professors on four- or five-year limited-term nonrenewable contracts. What "top class" students will want to enroll in any of these programs two or three years from now, knowing that the international professors may be dismissed before their junior year? What international students will want to make a commitment to be educated in Japan at a university that has demonstrated no commitment to its international faculty?

In the past, Japanese students, parents and employers alike have largely relied on a university's name as a simple means of judging the quality of an institution. This is thankfully beginning to change, with increased interest in independent rankings and other comparative measures of quality. International students are even more likely to seek such transparency in institutional information, so next month a group of international educators will formally launch global30.org, a noncommercial Web site providing objective information for prospective students and the public on the Global 30 programs. The site will offer annual report cards evaluating and comparing data on the quality of the programs at the Global 30 institutions as well as an ongoing overall assessment of the effectiveness of the Global 30 Project.

Not that international students need to rely on scholars, or even slick university admissions brochures, to tell them what constitutes a good educational experience. Today's Web-savvy students make extensive use of social media, using Twitter, Facebook and blogs to instantly share the reality of their experiences across the globe. Universities that fail to fully deliver on their promises and provide the high-quality education expected by international students will soon find the well of interested applicants runs dry.

The question isn't "Will international students come to Japan?" but rather "How long will it last?" Luring students to Japan with the promise of a world-class education in the first year is much easier than keeping them coming and retaining them.

Four or five years from now, the reality will overcome the rhetoric. The choice is clear: Global 30 institutions can transform themselves by providing students with a top-class global education, embracing international students and professors by treating them as equals in every way, or they can use sleight of hand to try and hide the fact that what they really offer is a parochial, second-rate education. Universities choosing to pursue the former strategy will ultimately be rewarded with outstanding international talent, students and faculty alike, and the world-class status that comes with them. Those that choose the latter will soon find recruiting "top class" international "human resources" to be nothing more than a field of dreams.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20100330zg.html

Higher education: opening up or closing in?

In his opening address to the Diet in January 2008, then Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda announced a proposal to increase the number of foreign students studying in Japan to 300,000 by 2020. The plan, presented under the heading "an open Japan," aims to bring in "top-class talent" from overseas to Japan's graduate schools and industries.

Moves to bring in more foreign students have long been a key engine driving higher education reform in Japan. Yasuhiro Nakasone's ambitious 1983 goal of bringing 100,000 foreign students to Japan — a target that took 20 years to attain (see graph) — was the first step in his plan to "internationalize" Japanese education. Nakasone himself was largely responsible for popularizing the term kokusaika (internationalization), as evidenced by his 1984 pledge to transform Japan into an "international country" (kokusai kokka nihon).

The 300,000-student goal is the driving force behind the the Global 30 Project, or, to give it its full title, the Kokusaika Kyoten Seibi Jigyo (literally, Kokusaika Hub Consolidation Project), a ¥15 billion plan to select and "internationalize" 30 core universities. Here "internationalization" is mainly interpreted as meaning the recruitment and education of international students in Japan, though the possibility of two-way exchanges, such as Japanese students studying abroad, is also mentioned.

Two terms which stand out in the Global 30 rhetoric are "competitiveness" and "human resources." The importance of the former was underlined by Fukuda's successor, Taro Aso, in his January 2009 policy speech, just a year after Fukuda announced his 300,000-student target.

"We will also be reinforcing our universities' international competitiveness (kokusai kyosoryoku) by promoting courses of study in which all degree requirements can be completed in English only, as well as programs for research centers of excellence at the global level," he told the Diet.

Aso's statement mentioned the first of four "action plans" aimed at creating an attractive educational and research environment for international students: the expansion of courses in which degrees can be earned through English-only classes. Whereas as of 2006, only six departments at five universities and 101 courses at 57 graduate schools allowed students to graduate after attending classes taught only in English, the Global 30 calls for an extra 33 undergraduate and 124 graduate courses to be taught entirely in the language.

A second pillar of the plan seeks to enhance facilities for receiving and hosting foreign students, such as specialist support staff, internship programs and flexible semester start dates. A third pillar aims to provide international students with opportunities to learn about Japanese language and culture. The fourth and final pillar concerns the setting up of overseas offices to provide a "one-stop service" for local recruitment and examination as well as furthering cooperation with local universities.

In July 2009, an initial 13 universities — seven national and six private — were selected from 22 applicants to receive Global 30 funding over the next five years. Their obligations include the recruitment of between 3,000 and 8,000 international students each. For example, Ritsumeikan University, a private university of 36,000 students in Kyoto, aims to increase the percentage of international students from its current (2008) 3.1 percent to 11.3, and the proportion of foreign faculty members from 9.9 to 15 percent by 2020.

At first glance, the Global 30 project would seem to be an example of Japan's "opening up." Certainly, the falling birth rate means Japanese universities need to attract more international students if they are to survive. The emphasis on lectures taught in English — the "global standard" — is consistent with the goal of turning Japanese higher education institutions into "international centers of learning" that can compete with universities in other countries for students.

But despite the rhetoric, kokusaika is not as straightforward a term as it first appears. First, the fact that Nakasone, a staunch nationalist, was largely responsible for making kokusaika official policy suggests that the term, at least in its dominant form, is rather different from English "internationalization." In fact, as government policy, kokusaika is best seen as a kind of defensive reaction to foreign pressure, a process in which Japan attempts to promote and maintain Japanese identity and national unity. In other words, kokusaika, at least in its dominant conservative manifestation, is less about transcending cultural barriers and more about protecting them.

Since the bursting of the bubble in 1990 and the ensuing "lost decade" — with its accompanying loss of national self-confidence — the term kokusaika, while continuing to enjoy a positive image, has become less popular. In recent years the term gurobaruka (globalization) — a word that only came into common currency in Japan in the late 1990s — has tended to feature more in the media. Unlike kokusaika, gurobaruka corresponds closely to the English meaning of a growing interconnectedness, unprecedented in its intensity. This encapsulates the crucial difference between kokusaika and gurobaruka: Globalization is an external process over which Japan has little or no influence or control.

While both kokusaika and gurobaruka involve coping with and responding to outside challenges and criticism, the latter demands passive compliance with external norms that Japan is unable to control, whereas the former actively pushes back against perceived threats to Japanese identity. Put differently, both kokusaika and gurobaruka describe something that surrounds Japan and that requires appropriate measures; however, kokusaika, unlike gurobaruka, also describes an activity the Japanese themselves engage in.

Educational reform in Japan in general, and the Global 30 in particular, demonstrate elements of both kokusaika and gurobaruka. A good example is the compromise that accompanied the education ministry's 2003 "action plan" to cultivate "Japanese who can use English." The plan, which will see English become compulsory for 5th- and 6th-grade elementary school students from 2011, came in for much criticism from those who argued that it was more important for youngsters to first learn Japanese properly before tackling English. Thus, in order to appease the critics, the ministry took pains to stress that the study of a foreign language would lead to a deeper understanding of Japanese language and culture.

The 300,000-foreign-student plan itself provides another example: Soon after the plan was presented, it was also announced that the government would expand the number of overseas Japanese-language facilities 10-fold, a move the Foreign Ministry portrayed as "fundamental for international understanding."

And in the Global 30, the English- content courses sit uncomfortably with the plan to provide "high-quality" instruction in Japanese language and culture, something Asian students in particular may find a little too ideological for their liking. Thus, at the same time as arguing that classes in English have a vital role to play in attracting foreign students, the education ministry also asks whether it is meaningful to graduate from a Japanese university without having studied Japanese at all. After all, they argue, isn't study in Japan an opportunity to learn about the country and its language, something that is necessary for both daily life and future career prospects? The rhetorical contortions and contradictions are painfully apparent.

Historically, Japan has attempted to defend and protect itself from "dangerous" foreign influences while at the same time accumulating goods, knowledge and resources that would make Japan more competitive internationally. Contemporary higher education reform reflects a similar push and pull: a desire to protect and strengthen Japanese national identity in the face of foreign pressure while at the same time acknowledging the necessity of embracing global trends, currents and standards. The result, as the case of the Global 30 suggests, is that a "closing in" occurs at the same time as an "opening up."

It is still too early to judge whether the Global 30 will be a success, but the initial signs are not promising. The new administration has already marked the Global 30 for budget cuts, and there are strong suggestions that the second selection stage may be indefinitely postponed, reducing the Global 30 to a "Global 13."

Certainly, the contradictory nature of the project's goals suggests successful implementation will be problematic। In the end, the need to compromise between the desire to maintain Japan's cultural independence and the need to promote English as an indispensable tool for international market competitiveness means Fukuda's target of 300,000 foreign students will be difficult to achieve.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20100323zg.html

Japan's first film university to be launched next year

A vocational film school in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, is set to become Japan's first accredited university specializing in filmmaking from April next year, with the goal of becoming an academy of motion picture arts drawing students not only from Japan but other Asian countries, the school said.

"We hope to make the university a major movie hub, gathering young Asians," said Tadao Sato, head of the Japan Academy of Moving Images.

"Making it a university was a dream of director Imamura," he said, referring to the late film director Shohei Imamura, who founded the precursor to the Japan Academy.

The corporation running the vocational school plans to file an application for accreditation with the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry in late March.

Imamura, a two-time laureate of the Cannes International Film Festival Palme d'Or for "The Ballad of Narayama" and "The Eel," launched the previous school 35 years ago.

Graduates of the school include many distinguished filmmakers, including Sang-il Lee, the director of "Hula Girls."

Film academies in China and South Korea have asked for an exchange program with the school.

But progress has not been made on the proposals because the school is not an accredited institution that can transfer credits to and from other like institutions and offer scholarships.

"We would be able to exchange teachers and students across borders if we become a university," Sato said.

Sato has introduced Asian films to Japan through his work as a film critic.

While continuing to teach filmmaking techniques, such as camera work and the history of movies in Japan and abroad, the school plans to provide additional education needed to understand film cultures, including literature, philosophy and languages, school officials said.

The school has been enrolling 200 students a year in the acting and imaging departments.

It plans to get rid of the acting department, reducing the enrolment quota to 140 a year when it becomes a university।

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9EBH6C82&show_article=1