News & Views item - July 2007

 

 

Higher Education in Japan, Opposing Views. (July 9, 2007)

    The Australian's Higher Educational Section of July 4 had a piece by David McNeill written originally for The Chronicle of Higher Education in which he writes: "ONE way of taking the educational pulse of Japan is to visit the school of international liberal studies at Waseda University. Higher education seems cosmopolitan and vibrant at the school, with a faculty that is 30 per cent foreign, drawn from a dozen nationalities, offering a diverse curriculum taught in English to students who must spend a year abroad to graduate. And the dean [Paul Snowden] is British... Waseda's embrace of foreigners is still much more the exception than the rule in Japan. Few Japanese universities have been as ready to take the hammer to tradition... universities in this Asian superpower remain strikingly homogenous and isolated from the globalising trend in higher education.

 

    "Snowden, who has written about comparative linguistics and culture, joined Waseda part time in 1980. Like many successful foreign academics in Japan, he questions whether non-Japanese have always made the commitment needed to build university careers here.

    "Negative feelings among foreigners can run deep. At a conference on education issues, foreign professors compared themselves with lab animals. 'When they have been sufficiently abused or have mastered the maze, it is time to bring in a fresh specimen,' one said. Some have sued employers for discrimination. Several institutions, including the respected private Ritsumeikan University, are dealing with disputes involving foreign instructors."

 

An Australian academic residing most of the year in Japan, an occasional reader of TFW and whose wife is on the Waseda University staff on reading McNeill's article emailed the follow opinion:

Her experience there  has been about 99% positive. She is well paid, has tenure until age 72, if  she wishes to remain that long, is treated with respect, kindness, and  friendliness by her colleagues, and has excellent health insurance benefits. In short, she has experienced  none of the problems that are described in the article (and may have as  much to do with the individuals involved as with their universities).

 

As for the "system" itself, we tend to see it in a context far larger than  the author of the article does. And in that context, Japan seems a far  more desirable place to be employed than anywhere else in the world -- unless you happen to be a "superstar" sought after by the richest private  universities in the US and thus can write your own contract. There isn't a  single job in Britain that she would prefer to her present one. Earlier  this year a post in her field opened up at Oxford and the chairman of the  search committee told her she could "walk into it" if she would apply. She  didn't. The RAE has ruined academic life in the UK.  In  Japan, private universities are at least still run by academics and not  "professional" administrators. From  where we sit, academic life here still seems pretty healthy.

 

As an example, in contrast with Japanese universities at NYU, more than  70% of all undergraduate teaching is done by graduate students working as  teaching assistants and part-timers on short-term contracts.