Sony Loses Science Talent as Student Resumes Go to Dairies: Tech

Japan’s science students are eschewing traditional high-powered employers such as Sony Corp. (6758) and Panasonic Corp. (6752) to help make ice cream and yogurt.

They are applying to dairies. That says quite a bit about the current state of Japan -- and, some say, its future.

Sony, the Walkman inventor that once topped the rankings among the most-coveted jobs for graduating science majors, may drop further in popularity after it fell to fourth place from second in a survey this year of science students who’ll enter the job market in April, said Takuya Kurita, a researcher at Tokyo-based Mynavi Corp. Sony, trying to end four years of losses, is hiring the fewest recruits in 23 years.

“I’ve read about their huge losses in the newspaper,” Asuka Okamoto, a physics graduate student at Waseda University in Tokyo, said of the electronics makers. “I’d rather work somewhere else if workers seem worried at those companies.”

As Japan’s biggest companies kick off their annual campus recruitment drives this month, science students are increasingly favoring companies like Meiji Holdings Co. (2269), a Tokyo-based dairy maker. For the once-dominant electronics makers, a loss of market share to Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) and Apple Inc. also means they’re losing future engineers and scientists needed to come up with hit products that can revive their brands.

“The gap between Japanese companies and Samsung, LG, and Chinese or Taiwanese competitors may only widen if the Japanese can’t hire excellent young talent,” said Yoshihisa Toyosaki, an analyst at Architect Grand Design, an electronics research and consulting company in Tokyo. “New products can only be born from new brains.”

Food Makers

Two of the three most popular employers for science students entering the job market next year are food manufacturers, according to Mynavi, an operator of job-hunting websites, which collected data from 16,451 students in the three months ended February.

Meiji topped the rankings, followed by Toshiba Corp. (6502), which makes products ranging from personal computers to nuclear reactors. Kagome Co. (2811), a maker of sauces and condiments, was third.

“Japan’s top manufacturers are being replaced by food makers in the rankings because the food business is considered stable,” Mynavi’s Kurita said. Science students, he said, “care about building a career at a stable company where they can work as researcher for a long time.”

Meiji, Kagome

In Japan, where many students accept job offers from large companies six months before graduating and may stay with the same employer until retirement, the nation’s unprofitable consumer-electronics makers are seen as volatile, said Yoshihide Suzuki, an administrative director at the career center at Waseda, a 130-year-old private school where Sony’s co-founder Masaru Ibuka studied engineering in the 1930s. That has made them less attractive to young job-seekers whose priorities include stability, he said.

Meiji shares have gained 15 percent this year, and its net income more than doubled to 5.2 billion yen ($63 million) in the six months ended Sept. 30 from a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Kagome, maker of ketchup and tomato juice, has risen 7.8 percent as its net income gained 88 percent to 5.7 billion yen in the same period.

Fewer Recruits

Meiji, which traces its history to 1906, has been profitable since its creation by a 2009 merger. The Tokyo-based company has expanded its workforce by 8 percent since 2010, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The company is receiving a “very large number of applicants” this season, Emiko Kurokawa, a spokeswoman for Meiji, said in an e-mail, without giving details.

The maker of Aya ice cream and Bulgaria Yogurt is hiring engineers for its plants and scientists for research and development. The company also makes pharmaceuticals, veterinary drugs and agricultural chemicals.

Sony, Panasonic and Sharp Corp. (6753) are recruiting fewer young people as they shrink their workforce. The three companies have announced a total of more than 29,800 job cuts for the year ending March 31 as they try to recover from 1.6 trillion yen in combined net losses last fiscal year.

Sony, which used to hire as many as 1,000 people from universities each year, plans to give jobs to 180 in April, said George Boyd, a spokesman. That’s down 35 percent from a year earlier and the lowest since 1990, he said. The number of engineers being hired will drop to 150 from 205 this year.

Campus Seminars

The Tokyo-based maker of Bravia TVs, which posted a 457 billion-yen loss for the year ended March 31, was the most- popular destination for science students for 10 straight years until 2003, according to Mynavi.

“Students don’t seem to believe entering Sony will secure anything for their lives,” said Waseda’s Suzuki.

Sony is holding recruiting events at universities and elsewhere and offers students opportunities to visit development sites and talk to company engineers, Boyd said.

Sony fell 0.9 percent to 820 yen at the 3 p.m. close of trade in Tokyo, extending its decline to 41 percent this year.

Panasonic plans to hire 350 people from universities next year, compared with 1,400 in 1992, said Chieko Gyobu, a spokeswoman. The Osaka-based company, which posted a 772 billion-yen loss last fiscal year, tumbled to 15th in Mynavi’s latest rankings, released in March, from the No. 1 spot a year earlier.

Panasonic is holding seminars on campuses and at its own offices “to secure applications from talented students” and is also strengthening its design, development and marketing operations overseas, Gyobu said.

‘Material Doubt’

“Although it’s true we’re facing difficulties after a big loss, we’re not going to continue declining,” Panasonic Vice Chairman Masayuki Matsushita said in a Nov. 26 interview. “Joining us now can actually be an opportunity to succeed.”

Sharp, the Osaka-based company that posted a 376 billion- yen loss last fiscal year and said Nov. 1 there was “material doubt” about its ability to survive, plans to hire 130 workers, compared with 240 last year, said Miyuki Nakayama, a spokeswoman. Sharp, which fell to 23rd from 16th in Mynavi’s latest ranking, is also recruiting on campuses, Nakayama said.

Samsung, the world’s biggest maker of TVs and mobile phones, doesn’t disclose its hiring practices. Samsung Group, its parent company, plans to hire 9,000 university graduates this year, according to a Feb. 29 statement.

Most students in Japan start job hunting Dec. 1, or about 16 months prior to graduation. Companies can start contacting students that day under guidelines issued by the Keidanren, Japan’s largest business lobby.

Starting Pay

Of university graduates who sought to start working in April this year, about 94 percent found an employer, up from 91 percent a year earlier, Japan’s labor ministry said in a statement May 15.

Japan’s jobless rate fell to 4.2 percent in October from 4.4 percent a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s lower than the 7.7 percent rate in the U.S. and 6.9 percent in Germany. Unemployment was 3 percent in South Korea, and the rate for China in September was 4.1 percent.

Sony paid a salary of 242,500 yen a month for new recruits who obtained a master’s degree in 2012, and 210,000 yen for those with a bachelor’s degree, according to the company’s website. Panasonic and Sharp each paid 228,500 yen for new hires who got a master’s degree that year, according to the companies.

Meiji’s pharmaceuticals unit paid 240,000 yen for recruits with a master’s degree this year, while Toyota Motor Corp. (7203), Japan’s biggest carmaker, paid 225,000 yen, according to the companies’ websites.

Yuki Okuyama, a 23-year-old physics student at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, said he’s interested in working with chipmaking equipment or infrastructure.

“I’ll probably check consumer electronics makers as well, though they seem to be troubled,” he said. Sony, Panasonic and Sharp “relied on a limited area of businesses and stumbled,” he said. “It would have been better if they had diversified.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Mariko Yasu in Tokyo at myasu@bloomberg.net; Shunichi Ozasa in Tokyo at sozasa@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Tighe at mtighe4@bloomberg.net

previous

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-12-09/sony-loses-science-talent-as-student-resumes-go-to-dairies-tech#p1

New universities are big business, needed or not

People who use the Tokyu Toyoko Line, which connects Tokyo and Yokohama, may wonder why there are stations called Toritsu-Daigaku and Gakugei-Daigaku when there are no daigaku (universities) near them. There used to be a Gakugei Daigaku (Tokyo Gakugei University) but it moved to Koganei in 1964. There were plans to build a Toritsu Daigaku (Tokyo Metropolitan University), but they were never realized. In fact, if you look at any train line map in Japan you're bound to find at least one station with daigaku or gakuen (academy) in the name. Former Seibu president Yoshiaki Tsutsumi supposedly named one station on the Seibu Ikebukuro Line Oizumi Gakuen because he wanted to persuade universities to open campuses in the area. None did. The name remained, however, as did Hitotsubashi-Gakuen on the Seibu Tamako Line, even though the school never took the bait.

Hard lesson: Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Makiko Tanaka found herself on the bad side of developers and local governments recently when she refused to approve the opening of three new schools. She later reversed her decision. KYODO

Universities represent prestige, which is why so many local governments — and developers — try to attract them to their regions. It's an industry, though no longer a growth one, and the new Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Makiko Tanaka, found herself on the bad side of that industry when she exercised her ministerial prerogatives two weeks ago and refused to approve the opening of three new schools. In order to operate as a four-year institution of higher learning, an educational entity must first be vetted by a panel of experts and then approved by the education minister, but Tanaka thought there were "problems" with the three schools' business plans and withheld approval. The universities had assumed this process was nothing more than a formality and had already accepted students for their first terms. They accused Tanaka of political grandstanding. In the end, she was forced to reverse her decision and grant approval.

A number of publications have run articles in the last week asserting that Tanaka was right in withholding approval. When the story first broke, the tenor of the coverage implied that Tanaka was making headlines for the sake of headlines; that she simply wanted to reinforce her image as the only major politician who stands up to entrenched bureaucratic interests. The three aggrieved institutions adopted this narrative to fight back, as did the opposition Liberal Democratic Party, which didn't need an excuse to complain about a member of the cabinet.

But since Tanaka's about-face under pressure, several media outlets have pointed out that while the famous daughter of Kakuei Tanaka, one of the most powerful prime ministers ever, rarely does anything that doesn't boost her brand, some pundits were too quick to reference the last time she took on the bureaucracy. In 2002, she was forced to resign as foreign minister after publicly criticizing the ministry's excessive budgetary outlays. As evidenced by the famous tears she shed in front of TV cameras, she seemed genuinely shocked by the backlash of people she supposedly supervised as well as then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's decision to take their side.

This time the situation is different. Rather than disavow their nominal boss' controversial remarks, education ministry officials took responsibility, as if they were trying to help her save face. In a discussion of the matter on NHK radio, one pundit brought up Tanaka's comment during the 2002 incident about how "someone was stepping on my skirt." In this situation, the pundit said, it's as if Tanaka "stepped on her own skirt and the ministry was trying to help her mend it." The weekly Aera went even further, theorizing that the ministry actively encouraged Tanaka's action, since it understands that the certification process is meaningless, and while it was planning to approve these three schools all along, it saw an opportunity to float the possibility of making the standards for approval stricter in the future.

As Tokyo Shimbun pointed out, Tanaka's initial disapproval wasn't wrong, just ill-timed, since the three schools were already in operational mode. Tanaka's move nevertheless spurred the media to report that it didn't make sense to approve more universities when the population was dropping and 46 percent of private universities are unable to enroll as many students as they need, a portion that gets larger every year. In 1991, the government relaxed regulations for private universities. At the time there were 523. Now there are 783, and a dozen new ones are approved every year.

While many of these institutions will fail in the near future due to falling enrollment and, thus, lack of funds — 40 percent of private universities operate in the red and Tokyo Shimbun predicts at least 100 will go bankrupt in the next decade — four-year schools still receive government subsidies, which encourages vocational schools and two-year junior colleges to upgrade, since young people have been convinced that they have no chance for meaningful work unless they possess a four-year degree. More than 50 percent of high school graduates go on to college now, and while the The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development claims that's well below the average for developed countries, the matriculation rate in 1960 was only 8 percent. Consequently, an increasing number of institutions are hedging their bets by becoming full-fledged universities since it's so easy to do. They'll worry about the ever-increasing competition for bodies later.

Besides, as the railway examples show, just adopting the word "university" invites respect. The weekly Shincho reported that the three schools Tanaka initially rejected have easy acceptance standards, meaning they take anyone who can pay. Only the "Top 50 private universities" in the country actually use testing and grades to determine eligibility. In that sense, these schools, which don't have to do anything to earn accreditation except carry out the application process, are like the students they attract — underachievers who don't know what to do with themselves, so why not go the university route?

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fd20121118pb.html

Japanese Firms Try New Hiring Strategies

TOKYO — There are plenty of major Japanese companies that can offer decent pay, benefits and job security. But when it comes to attracting top young international talent, Japanese employers are aware that the tide is against them. This is especially true in the high-tech world where Japan is no longer considered to be on the cutting edge of cool.

“The appeal of working for a Japanese company is diminishing,” said Ryuichi Yoshinaga, president of Pasona Tech , an employment agency that specializes in information technology personnel and conducts job fairs in Beijing, Shanghai and Dalian, China, for Japanese recruiters.

The new reality — in which China’s economy is now larger than Japan’s — has changed perspectives, he said. “Leading Japanese technology firms are struggling” to recruit young workers there, Mr. Yoshinaga said.

“It used to be that Japanese companies were next to Western firms in popularity,” he added. As for young Chinese graduates, “many of them believe they might have a good career perspective by staying put in China.”

Politics has also gotten in the way of cross-border hiring. As tensions grew over disputed islands in the East China Sea, Japanese employers had to cut back on recruiting activities this year, especially in Beijing.

“Chinese universities are asking us not to hold recruiting events on campus for safety reasons,” said a spokeswoman at a Japanese company who asked to remain anonymous because of the political sensitivity of the issue. In northeastern cities like Dalian, which traditionally has friendlier attitudes toward Japan, hiring can be done, but only discreetly. “Over all, recruitment activities by Japanese firms might have fallen by more than half this year in China,” she said.

Some Japanese recruiters say that the risks in China have prompted them to do more recruiting in Southeast Asian nations like the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

Foreign job seekers face several hurdles in Japan. They might be expected to master the Japanese language and go through the arduous process of learning the Japanese way of professional life. A globe-trotting, job-hopping young American, Chinese or European new graduate might not want to invest the time and energy. Plus, traditional employers may not give new recruits much responsibility. The mentality in Japan is that new workers can learn the ropes over time, and young hires are often not given jobs that match their specializations.
But securing high-caliber talent from abroad is crucial for Japanese companies, especially since their home market is shrinking. They need to reach overseas, human resources managers at Japanese corporations say.

Relatively young I.T. firms are now rethinking the conventional Japanese way of recruiting and training, trying new tactics instead: They are actively seeking employees overseas, using more English in the workplace, giving young workers more responsibility, and even acquiring top talent through takeovers and mergers with foreign companies.

Rakuten , which operates Japan’s largest Internet shopping mall, has been expanding its geographic reach overseas by buying online retail companies like Buy.com from the United States, Tradoria from Germany and PriceMinister from France. It has also decided to embrace English as its official language to foster better communication among its global units and increase organizational visibility for non-Japanese workers.

“If you don’t have full-scale policy regarding language, non-Japanese workers might feel excluded,” said Masayoshi Higuchi, vice department manager of global human resources at Rakuten. Mr. Higuchi said that in the last two years, when their new language policy was announced and instituted in a phased manner, there was an increase in the number of international employees.

This year, 70 out of 100 new hires in the engineering department were non-Japanese. In 2010, about 4 percent of the staff members at the parent company were foreign; that doubled to 8 percent in 2012.

“The language policy has had a significant impact” on our ability to conduct recruitment, he said.

Avinash Varma, 23, a graduate of the University of Mumbai, is one such promising employee who joined Rakuten in 2011.

He felt that Rakuten would be a good place to develop his career as a software engineer because, “I can obtain domain knowledge specifically of Internet shopping,” he said.
In India, the software engineering field is focused on outsourcing, he said. Although he had no prior knowledge of the Japanese language, he had no qualms about working for Rakuten, because the majority of staff in his department were international, including his American department manager.

Filling the managerial ranks with members of the international staff was also a significant move for Rakuten, “since that enables younger staff to visualize their career path,” said Mr. Higuchi of the global resources department.

In the past year, Mr. Varma has been involved in introducing Rakuten’s new online shopping malls in mainland China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Taiwan. “As a software engineer, it has been a great experience,” he said.

Kazuaki Mihara, human resources manager at DeNA , a leading provider of mobile-based social networking games, is aware of the problems that have confounded Japanese human resources managers looking to recruit from overseas.

“It is a question of how you go about doing it,” he said. “We are proactive in communicating what our company is all about. We are at the cutting edge of mobile gaming technology, and we are recognized as a leading player in this space overseas.”

Besides, DeNA does not have the strict hierarchy of a traditional Japanese company. “It’s an organization in which it is not the weight of your position that counts but the weight of what you say that counts,” Mr. Mihara said.

This past April, 100 new employees, 20 of whom were non-Japanese, joined the company fresh from university.

Justin Sharps, 24, a recent graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was one of them. He joined DeNA last autumn and, after some language training, was assigned to an active engineering task within a month.

“One of the things that I liked was that they gave new engineers a push straight out the door,” he said. “I was writing production code a month after joining, which was a great opportunity.”

He said that the company’s culture focused on tasks, which allowed young people to “emerge with a strong set of engineering skills that you almost couldn’t get anywhere else.”
“I am given a quite lot of responsibility, even in areas that I have not studied,” he added.
At DeNA, Mr. Sharps is developing gaming platforms from which to launch mobile social networking games. The company’s Mobage gaming social network service has 40 million registered users, which helped DeNA make ¥145 billion, or $1.8 billion, in revenue for the fiscal year that ended in March.

I.T. firms like Rakuten and DeNA are no longer following the traditional belief that new hires should be given a reprieve to prove themselves.

“Japanese companies’ approach has been to hire a whole bunch and then train them collectively,” without regard to individual skill levels, said Mr. Higuchi of Rakuten’s global human resources department. “And then the company decides which department to allocate them to later.”

This one-size-fits-all approach no longer works in companies like Rakuten. “We need to hire globally competitive engineers from around the world,” Mr. Higuchi said. “Graduates from overseas universities like China are often better trained in their fields,” he added. “Japanese universities don’t provide practical training to students.”

Other strategies adopted by Japanese companies include using mergers and acquisitions as a way to obtain high-quality personnel. Since 2005, NTT Data, a leading systems integration firm, has been buying up Western companies like Keane, a $1 billion U.S. American I.T. service provider, and Value Team, an Italian systems integrator. The group’s work force rose from 27,000 to 57,000 in the process.

NTT Data’s human resources senior manager, Ichiro Tanaka, said that his company needed partners overseas to service their multinational clients. But a deeper reason may be to obtain human talent, he noted, since recruiting from Tokyo may not be enough.

“Our company name is not known overseas,” he said. “But our local partners have a solid and sustained system of corporate recruitment.”

In 2007, NTT Data acquired a majority stake in Vertex Software, an Indian company. It now hires 4,000 new employees each for in India alone for the group, mobilizing its 150 strong team of recruiters for India. “That’s something the parent company cannot do. You have to be a locally established company to do that,” Mr. Tanaka said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/world/asia/13iht-sreducjapan13.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Tokyo University to sponsor Super 30 students

The highly acclaimed Super 30 educational programme which trains students from economically backward sections for the IIT-JEE, on Wednesday entered into an agreement with University of Tokyo which would sponsor study of its students in Japan.

The pact was reached in Patna during a meeting between Anand Kumar, the founder of Super 30, and Yoshino Hiroshi, Director, The University of Tokyo.

As per the tie-up, the University of Tokyo would sponsor study of at least one student of Super 30.

The sponsorship will start with admission of Indian students from October 2013, Mr. Yoshino told PTI.

“University of Tokyo is reaching an understanding with the Patna-based mathematical group (Super 30) because of its remarkable performance of training economically poor students to qualify in top institutions like IIT,” he said.

Mr. Yoshino said the Japanese government Broadcast Corporation (NHK) ran a programme on Super 30 under the heading “Indian shock” to highlight the success of the mathematical club.

He said the engagement with Super 30 was part of Japanese government programme “Global 30” to increase flow of Indian students there.

“Presently, out of 1.4 lakh foreign students annually coming to Japan, India’s contribution is only 600. Japan wishes to increase (its) number of foreign students to 3 lakh by 2020 which can be achieved by raising flow of students from India, particularly in the field of science and technology,” he said.

Mr. Kumar said the offer from the university was encouraging.

“This will open avenues for our students in foreign country,” he said.

Super 30 is an initiative of Mr. Kumar, a mathematician, to train 30 poor students every year for IIT-JEE out of which a majority have so far succeeded in the test.

http://m.thehindu.com/news/national/tokyo-university-to-sponsor-super-30-students/article4027930.ece/?maneref=http%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FeUmL2PiQ

Ex-Stanford president says Japan's universities need to get priorities straight

In the face of global competition in research, several of Japan's top institutions have chosen to "streamline" their undergraduate programs, cut back on their liberal arts education and focus instead on technical disciplines.

That's a mistake, says former Stanford President Gerhard Casper, who turned his financially strapped institution into a higher education global brand--currently No. 2 in a world university ranking behind Harvard University.

"In China, there's lots of targeted research going on, but in order to be an innovative culture, you need students who will challenge accepted wisdom and not just excel in technical fields," says Casper, 74. "As long as they're not there, chances to become great are limited."

In September, Casper appeared as a panelist at the Stanford Kyoto Trans-Asian Dialogue 2012, discussing among other topics the shifting terrain of higher education in Asia, as regional universities seek to modernize amid an influx of branch campuses of Western universities.

http://newsonjapan.com/html/newsdesk/article/98824.php

Univ. of Tokyo ranked Asia's No. 1, other Japanese schools slipping

The University of Tokyo was once again crowned Asia's best university in an annual global league table released Wednesday, while other Japanese institutions slipped down the rankings.

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings places the university in 27th place -- up from 30th last year -- in a table of the world's top 200 establishments.

However, the four other Japanese universities in the top 200 fell behind on last year. Kyoto University dropped from 52nd to 54th, the Tokyo Institute of Technology moved from 108th to 128th, Tohoku University went down from 120th to 137th, and Osaka University fell from 119th to 147th. That said, Japan has more universities in the top 200 than any other Asian nation.

Phil Baty, the report's editor, told Kyodo News the declines are due to several factors including the rise of other Asian nations, particularly China and Taiwan, and also the failure of Japanese universities to adopt a more international outlook.

http://newsonjapan.com/html/newsdesk/article/98711.php

Business leaders in call to ride wave of Japan's Southeast Asia expansion

THE key to Australia's growth after the China boom lies in joining Japan's wave of expansion in fast-growing emerging markets, according to key Japanese and Australian business leaders.

However, Australian companies and employees needed to abandon their reluctance to embrace Asia if they hoped to boost their profits and careers, executives from ANZ, Japanese food and beverage giant Kirin and PricewaterhouseCooprs told The Australian.

The call for a fresh focus on Japan-related opportunities comes as business leaders in both countries prepared to mark the 50th anniversary of the industry body linking the two countries.

Julia Gillard and former Treasury secretary Ken Henry will address the Australia Japan Business Co-operation Committee conference in Sydney today, to be chaired by AJBCC chairman Rod Eddington and his Japanese counterpart, Nippon Steel president Akio Mimura.

A report published by PwC, to be introduced at the conference by Tokyo-based PwC partner Jason Hayes, shows the sheer scale of Japan's expansion into Southeast Asia, right on Australia's doorstep, and highlights the potential gains of tie-ups with Japanese firms.

The Revitalising Corporate Japan report shows that Japan's merger and acquisitions activity rose by 42 per cent in Asia from 2010 to 2011 and is now growing at an increasingly rapid pace.

Mr Hayes, who head PwC's Japan practice, said Japan was offering Australia its best chance to be a serious player in Asia instead of simply being a supplier of raw commodities.

"Australia needs to move quickly to take advantage and not remain fixated on China as the only game in town because I think ignoring Japan may be to our detriment," Mr Hayes said.

Leading Japanese firms such as Kirin, Uniqlo, convenience store operator Lawson and other corporate giants are spearheading a new push into China, Thailand, Vietnam, India, Indonesia and now Burma as growth opportunities in Japan dry up.

ANZ Japan chief Peter Davis said tapping into this expansion would help Australian companies boost their engagement in the region and would be vitally important for Australia's growth.

This expansion would provide Australian companies and suppliers with low-risk opportunities to join forces with Japanese industry and boost their sales in the epicentre of global growth, Mr Davis said.

"Japanese investment into Asia has doubled for each of the last three years," Mr Davis said.

"That's a huge influence on all of the Asian region.

"The penetration of Japan into Thailand, Vietnam and China is far, far deeper than Australia's has been. They might have had some difficulties, but they have had far more longevity in those markets and have a lot more experience than Australian companies do," Mr Davis added.

"The whole focus in Australia is on investment from China, when indeed the more significant investment over the last 10 years has been from Japan, and the Japan rate of investment has been increasing rapidly in the last three years."

Food and beverage giant Kirin, which owns Lion (formerly Lion Nathan and National Foods) in Australia and now sees 30 per cent of its profits come from Australasia, is the most successful example of this dual Japanese-Australian approach.

Senior executives from the company said it was deploying Australian staff, systems and products as it expanded in emerging markets in Asia and Latin America.

Kirin global head of strategy Ryosuke Mizouchi said that it was sometimes easier for Kirin to find talent in its Australian business than in Japan. Australian companies and employees were natural partners for Japanese firms bent on expansion, he said.

"From the cultural point of view, and also a governance and common-sense point of view, I think Australia and Japan can work together pretty well," Mr Mizouchi said.

"Instead of getting there all by ourselves, going together with Australian companies could give us an advantage. By combining that diversity of strengths I think we should become better at dealing with the new challenges in emerging markets."

Mr Mizouchi said people in Japan underestimated the importance of the relationship between Japan and Australia, although soon more companies would grasp Australia's potential as a market and as a springboard to other parts of the world.

The head of Kirin in Singapore, Hiroshi Fujikawa, said Lion's Australian management had great human relations and strategic planning skills, while Japanese staff remained world class in terms of product development, production techniques and research and development.

"If we could combine those strengths together, I think there are a lot of opportunities for us to jointly develop the emerging markets," Mr Fujikawa said.

But ANZ's Mr Davis said many Australian companies remained too nervous about expanding into Asia after a series of high-profile failures in recent decades.

"For many companies, it's still just a toe in the water," Mr Davis said. "There's a lack of significant strategic commitment. If they are to see the growth levels available, they are going to need to see a portion of their revenues coming from this part of the world."

Mr Davis said ANZ's Japan operation were vital to the bank achieving its goal of sourcing 25-30 per cent of revenue from outside Australia and New Zealand within five years.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/economics/business-leaders-in-call-to-ride-wave-of-japans-southeast-asia-expansion/story-e6frg926-1226490223313

Japanese college fair held in Indonesia

About 2,000 Indonesian students attended a Japanese college fair in the capital Jakarta on Sunday.

The Japan Student Services Organization held the fair to promote opportunities for Indonesian students to study in Japan, where the youth population is decreasing.47 universities and Japanese language schools participated in the event. They included 15 public and 21 private universities. Among them are well-known schools such as Kyoto University and Waseda University.

A Kyoto University official explained that the graduate school offers some classes in English.
Japan's education ministry conducted a survey last year and found that more than 5,500 Indonesians wanted to apply for Japanese government scholarships. This was the highest figure among overseas applicants.

An Indonesian student says she has enjoyed learning the Japanese language since she was a child. She says she wants to become a translator.

The organization's vice president, Hideki Yonekawa, says universities need to admit many foreign students because the youth population is declining in Japan.

http://newsonjapan.com/html/newsdesk/article/98643.php

Learning curve: With a push, Japan's universities go global

To stay competitive, more schools are welcoming international students and teachers, promoting bilingual programs of study and encouraging young Japanese to study abroad.

For Mai Hoai Giang, a student from Vietnam, securing a job in Japan after graduation couldn't have been easier. No less than 300 corporate recruiters flocked to her school, the Asia Pacific University (APU), which prides itself on bilingual programs. Giang, who is fluent in Japanese, English and Vietnamese, was snapped up by Fast Retailing Co. and is now working as a Uniqlo shop assistant manager in Tokyo. Eventually, she hopes to be transferred to her home country, where the retailer is expanding. "I've always wanted to be in an international environment," she says.

Japan could use a lot more people like Giang. Faced with anemic economic growth, an aging workforce and a shrinking population, the world's most indebted country is realizing that to grow, it must go global. Leading this push are the country's universities that are, with government support, embracing a more cosmopolitan approach by welcoming international students and teachers, promoting bilingual programs of study and encouraging young Japanese to study abroad. "We need a change in mindset" says Kuniaki Sato, deputy director of the higher-education bureau at the Ministry of Education. "The world is globalizing whether they like it or not."


The change has been slow in coming - and there's a long way to go. Despite billions of yen in scholarships for international students and exchange programs since the 1950s, from 2009 to 2011, only about 4% of students at Japan's 750 to 760 private and national universities came from other countries, according to the Japan Student Services Organization. Among Japan's university faculty, only 5% were foreign, and most were teaching English. The Education Ministry says that since 2000, there has been a 50% drop in Japanese university students studying abroad.

(Time, Sep 18)

Link: http://world.time.com/2012/09/17/learning-curve-with-a-push-japans-universities-go-global/

Japanese kids get a taste of farming down under

A little different to the traditional tour bus! (Olivia Garnett)

Picture this: 16 ecstatic Japanese school students dressed in suits, clinging onto a dusty ute driving through lush paddocks in the south west of Western Australia.

It's not something you see every day.

The starry-eyed 12 to 15-year-olds are visiting from the Fukushima region on a tour which might just change their lives.

It has been almost 18 months since a terrifying tsunami devastated the Pacific coast of Japan, triggered by a massive earthquake.

Cattle farms were inundated by seawater and left with dangerous levels of radiation, forcing farmers to abandon properties.

Motivated by their dire situation, Meat and Livestock Australia arranged for these Japanese school students to visit beef cattle farms in Western Australia to reinspire their interest in agriculture.

Miho Kondo, manager of Japan trade services with MLA, is looking after the kids on the tour, many of which come from Wagyu beef properties.

She says the visit to the organic farm in Boyup Brook has opened their eyes to different ways of farming.

"Because of this radioactive contamination issue in their village they are not able to raise cattle anymore, which is a really sad thing."

"So this visit hopefully will give them some hope in the future for their wish to re-build their cattle farming and the community."

"It has been really interesting... once we got to the farm the kids faces brightened up and their eyes shining and they're laughing and smiling," Ms Kondo said.

Owner of Blackwood Valley Organic Beef, Warren Pensini, insisted the students jump on the back of the ute to get to where the cattle were grazing.

"That was pretty interesting, I possibly should've cleaned the back of the ute before they got on." he laughed.

The rain didn't seem to dampen the excitement of the children who were fascinated by the wide-open spaces and friendly cows.

Mr Pensisi says he learned a lot from his foreign visitors.

"Certainly they had a good perspective on what we were doing and they could relate it back to what they do in their own situations."

"I think it's always great to have that cross-cultural learning."

http://www.abc.net.au/rural/content/2012/s3564297.htm

Japanese Universities Go Global, but Slowly

AKITA, JAPAN — Takuya Niiyama, a sophomore at Akita International University, dreams of becoming an international tourism operator promoting the northern Japanese prefecture of Akita, leveraging his hard-earned language skills and a network of international students he befriended on campus. Mr. Niiyama, who is from Akita, hopes that the university’s mandated one-year overseas exchange program will help him achieve his goal.

“I need to acquire solid English skills,” he said. “And I knew that an ordinary Japanese university would not prep me for that.”

As Japanese schools intensify efforts to globalize their campuses, Akita International University seems well on its way toward internationalization, with foreign exchange students arriving from more than 50 institutions from around the world.

Mineo Nakajima, AIU’s president, visited U.S. schools like the University of California, San Diego and The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, while planning his new institution.

A.I.U., founded in 2004, joins a handful of others in experimenting with these kinds of endeavors. The problem is that they are a glaring exception rather than a trend in Japan.

Some new schools outside the major cities are beating their bigger, older, slow-moving peers to the punch, with more international students and graduates who are likely to be multicultural and multilingual. They are also drawing the attention of corporate recruiters.

“Japan is still an intellectually closed shop,” said Mr. Nakajima of AIU, who was the former president of the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.

At The University of Tokyo, Japan’s top university, also known as Todai, only 53 undergraduates took part in its exchange program in 2011, or 0.4 percent of the student body of 14,100.

Keio University, another leading name in Tokyo with an undergraduate enrollment of 29,000, sent only 133 students overseas in 2010, or 0.45 percent of the total student body.

Only eight universities across Japan, mostly private, sent more than 100 students abroad to obtain 16 credits or more in 2009, according to a university handbook published by The Asahi Shimbun. (Japan has more than 700 colleges and universities.)

Reasons cited include low enthusiasm among students for study abroad, as well as a lack of drive and commitment on the part of universities to internationalize their programs.

Masako Egawa, a University of Tokyo spokeswoman, acknowledged that it had lagged behind both its international counterparts and its domestic peers.

“It is true, we have not had as extensive a system for international exchange as private universities do,” she said in an interview.

“We have been doing well at the graduate divisions, however, with 18 percent of the students coming from overseas.”

Still, most large universities, including Todai, see the urgency of increasing overseas exchanges. This is particularly true as Japanese corporations need more graduates capable of helping them globalize, and as the universities themselves look to draw more students as the Japanese population ages.

“We would like to see Japanese universities become more open internationally,” said Toshimitsu Iwanami, senior executive vice president of NEC Corp., a major information technology services provider. “And when that occurs, there may be a greater number of Japanese youth with globally ready talent.”

Mr. Iwanami heads a committee on education at Keidanren, Japan’s leading federation of large corporations, which has voiced concerns about a lack of international higher education.

He added that Japanese employers were hoping that universities would introduce more bilingual, foreign graduates to the labor market.

The vast majority of Japan’s leading universities are in big cities like Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka. They admit thousands of students annually and have a century of history behind them, perpetuating the notion that institutions must be large, entrenched and urban to thrive.

But Akita International University, which has struck a chord with both students and corporate recruiters, has surprised the establishment. Located in a part of Akita city surrounded by woods, it was created in 2004 financed largely by Akita Prefecture with a mission to produce internationally minded thinkers.

Half of the faculty are non-Japanese and all classes are taught in English. Today, the university ranks among the nation’s top schools, like Osaka University and the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, in competitiveness of admissions. Last year, A.I.U. accepted only one out of 21 applicants in the segment of admissions that requires a competitive examination.

A relatively small university with total enrollment of 834, A.I.U. has become a magnet for corporate recruiters.

“Leading Japanese firms as well as foreign firms such as Morgan Stanley have been conducting recruitment by actually paying a visit to Akita,” said Hiroshi Kobayashi, editor of a university administration magazine. “That is very rare for a school that is located in a remote area.” He said regional universities normally had to woo corporate visitors by paying for their travel.

At A.I.U., 114 international students study there as part of the exchanges that it has with 130 overseas universities.

Mr. Nakajima, the university president, said designing a system that was fully compatible with overseas schools was key. There are bigger problems, like a paucity of English-language courses, and smaller ones, like a course numbering system that is incompatible with what is used internationally.

Another institution with a successful international program is Ritsumeikan Asia-Pacific University, which was founded in 2000 in Ooita Prefecture on the southern island of Kyushu.

Its founding president, Kazuichi Sakamoto, said he felt the urge to create a new international university.

“We felt the approach of doing something a little here and there to fix the system won’t do,” he said.

So, he and colleagues from Ritsumeikan University, in Kyoto, founded a new school in Ooita, with the help of a governor who wished to use the project to help revitalize the region.

“The buzz word we worked on was internationalization ‘from within’ to create a campus here that would be made up of students from around the world,” Mr. Sakamoto said.

Today, Ritsumeikan Asia-Pacific University has the highest number, as well as the highest ratio, of foreign students working toward a degree in Japan: 2,692 from 81 countries who represent 43 percent of the total body. It achieved a 95 percent job placement rate in 2011 and, like Akita International University, is frequently visited by recruiters from leading companies.

A survey published by The Nikkei Shimbun this month asked human resources heads at major Japanese companies which universities they were “paying most attention” to, in terms of nurturing talent. The first three spots went to Akita, the University of Tokyo and Ritsumeikan Asia-Pacific.

Akita and Ritsumeikan Asia-Pacific employed two different tacks for internationalization. But their success came from one common link: They started universities from scratch.

Japanese universities, experts say, are run in a collegial manner. Top-down overhauls are invariably hobbled by faculty who prefer the status quo.

“Changing an existing university is very difficult. Thus you might as well start a new one,” Mr. Nakajima said. “When I was president at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, I tried to redesign the English-language program to make it more communication oriented.”

The plan was foiled when he was met with resistance from the English faculty.

The answer may not be in tinkering with international programs, but a deeper change in the mind-sets of the faculty and the administrators, said Kirk R. Patterson, former dean at the Japan campus of Temple University, in Philadelphia.

“There is a general lack of meaningful contribution by Japanese scholars to the international dialogue in their disciplines,” he said, citing low levels of participation in conferences and publication in academic journals, particularly in the social sciences. “If professors can’t be participants in the international dialogue, how can universities themselves become internationalized? Just talking about a flow of a few dozen students back and forth will not make universities international. The flow will come if the institutions themselves become more international.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/world/asia/30iht-educlede30.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all 

Guidebook to Japanese colleges makes way to bookstores in China

A guidebook on Japanese universities hit the shelves of bookstores in major Chinese cities earlier this month to attract more students amid declining enrollment.

Study guide: The Chinese-language book "Study in Japan" contains information for Chinese students seeking to study at Japanese universities. KYODO

The book provides details on about 600 public and private universities in Japan and tips on how to find jobs as well.

As of May last year, some 140,000 non-Japanese were enrolled at universities and other institutions of learning in Japan. Chinese made up the bulk of the students at around 88,000.

"We want to help increase the number of Chinese students further," said an official with a Tokyo-based nonprofit group that promotes bilateral educational exchanges and supervised the guidebook.

The book cites the Hayabusa space probe, which concluded a seven-year trip to asteroid Itokawa in 2010, and Japan's research on induced pluripotent stem cells for regenerative medicine as examples of Japan's contributions to cutting-edge technology. It also ranks colleges by academic discipline.

The book might be sold in Japan in the future, targeting foreign students, the NPO said.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120724a9.html

Study-abroad language barrier lowered

It will become possible to obtain the necessary qualifications in Japanese to enroll in leading universities overseas, such as Harvard University in the United States, the education ministry has said.

The International Baccalaureate (IB), which offers internationally recognized educational qualifications, has three programs--Primary Years, Middle Years and Diploma. The IB Diploma Program, which covers material equivalent to Japan's high school curriculum, can be used instead of domestic qualifications to enter universities in foreign countries.

The International Baccalaureate Organization, based in Switzerland, told the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry on Monday that it would allow the IB Diploma Program to be conducted in Japanese. The ministry will consider concrete steps to start the program.

The IB programs are currently offered in English, French and Spanish, with parts also offered in German and Chinese. If the program is allowed to be conducted in Japanese, it will become the sixth language to be used in the IB courses.

The IB educational programs focus not only on acquiring knowledge but also on developing the ability to find solutions to problems through discussion.

To enter an overseas university from Japan, a student needs to meet various requirements, such as passing exams that differ depending on the target country. Students can also qualify to take an examination for about 2,000 universities if they complete the IB Diploma Program and score at least 24 out of a possible 45 points on a standard IB exam that is administered at the same time around the world.

Therefore, offering the IB Diploma Program in Japanese is expected to encourage more Japanese students to study abroad.

The training of instructors and examiners for the exams will also be in Japanese. However, some classes and exams will be conducted in English to help students develop the language skills to study overseas at leading universities.

As the diploma program is currently only offered in English in Japan, it is difficult to find teachers with the necessary language skills. This is part of the reason why apart from international schools, only five high schools in Japan offer the program.

The government asked the organization to allow the program to be conducted in Japanese because it wants 200 high schools to offer the course as part of efforts to develop internationally competitive students.

(Jun. 20, 2012)

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T120619003881.htm