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.

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