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Jalapeno
"a class debate on how to boost sales of fish sausages" - uhm, OK.
gogogo
These universities need to get with the times and offer online degrees.
Dan Lewis
I'm not sure there's much that can be done to save these schools. Simple supply and demand (no. of students vs no. of schools), combined with the hollowing out of many rural areas makes it an unavoidable demise for many of them.
Kabukilover
You wonder if this university, all else aside, is too intelligent to survive. The students study entirely in English! Gasp! Generally speaking, even most English majors do not study English literatures in English. They become English teachers and professors who spend their lives faking scholarship and English ability. They become anti-English English teachers as someone wrote long ago.
Thomas Hobbs? You mean the cartoon character?
An intelligent university like this would find it hard to survive Tokyo or Osaka.
BertieWooster
All they need to do is develop a curriculum that fits the needs of High School graduates. Develop actual skills and teach applicable data. The time has passed when a lecturer can stand up and deliver a boring monotone that students sleep through waiting for their inevitable graduation certs.
Yubaru
Wait for it....there are some major changes in the pipeline and universities that have deadwood courses are going to have to cut those courses to survive. The center test is disappearing, and technical colleges, the one's that pass the certification requirements, are going to be recognized as senmon-shoku junior colleges or colleges (4 year) and be given the same funding from the government that these other universities get.
It's a fact, well know for years now, that technical colleges on the whole, place more graduates into the work force than the universities.
The more popular universities are going to survive, and the less popular one's are going to become places where many students play for 4 years and end up back at McDonalds or Lawsons after they finish their 4 year vacations.,
thepersoniamnow
This is not an educational problem.
Its a societal problem, one of a massive shrinkage in population, lack of babies being born, and a hollowing out of the countryside due to the first two reasons.
Raymond Chuang
I'm not surprised at this. In fact, I expect most major universities in Japan to be located around mostly Sapporo, Sendai, the entire Kanto Plain, the Keihanshin region (Kyoto/Nara/Osaka/Kobe), Okayama, Hiroshima, and Fukuoka within the next 15-20 years.
serendipitous1
370 students (or even the 600 it planned to have) seems a pretty small number to be considered a university. Maybe the title should begin, 'Small universities....'
wtfjapan
It's a fact, well know for years now, that technical colleges on the whole, place more graduates into the work force than the universities. exactly, I attended technical college for one year then used that credit to upgrade to the Uni course. I learned more and enjoyed the technical college far more than the 1.5yrs I spent at Uni, eventually dropping out from boredom and to start a fulltime job. One thing I now regret was not completing the technical college diploma (architectural studies), taught by professionals that actually work and have hands on experience in the fields they teach. ironically I now work in a field totally unrelated to Architecture but I still wish I completed the tech college diploma.
toshiko
Many
Kobe White Bar Owner
@ gogogoToday 04:59 pm JST
These universities need to get with the times and offer online degrees.
Online dergees are not worth the pdf's they are "printed" on, just more circling of the drain.
toshiko
Many local colleges were already disappeared. Especially Prefecture created (Kenritsu). Uuniv and colleges.
Black Sabbath
Traditional societies: high birth rate + high death rate = stable population
Transitional (industrializing) societies: high birth rate + low death rate = population explosion
Transitioned (post industrial) societies: low birth rate = low death rate = stable population
There is not one population of humans that does not obey this trend. With native growth. The exception are those nations that allow immigration. Immigrants take two generations to adapt their population curves/
The answer for Japan's hallowing out of, well, everything, is obvious.
toshiko
Coed was ordered by GHQ and that was hurriedly implemented in 1951. for public funded schools. Univ. accepted one girl for Economic major in newly expanded Prefecture univ branch in our city. The girl to be accepted had to behave athletic. At that time, girls and boys went different schools but Japan lost war.
toshiko
Online U? Not accredited, I'd bet. The article is complaining future of Local U. The Univ. needs to add curriculum of InfoTech, international trade, several different foreign languages to attract international business minded youngsters who can work for Japan inc. upon graduation.
Bernie O'Mahony
I teach at Yamaguchi University which has a massive English Program! Over 300 simultaneous courses teaching English at almost all levels, as well as other core subjects, taught in English only.
Many students choose to attend here because of the English programs available, including foreign students that come to study English, Japanese and the sciences.
They also offer online courses, national, international study options and assessment.
Can't speak for the alleged decline in 18+ year olds, but certainly no lack of them here.
MASSWIPE
"Some universities and colleges will likely be forced out of business as the population decline among 18-year-olds is expected to pick up pace in 2018.
Already in fiscal 2016 that ended in March, nearly half of the 600 private universities and colleges across Japan had failed to secure the number of students stipulated in their plans."
I don't mean to sound harsh here, but that second sentence would appear to totally justify proceeding with the scenario outlined in the first sentence. Many "universities" in Japan are de facto vocational schools with total enrollment of far fewer than even one thousand students. How on earth are these private institutions going to continue paying their faculty members and whatnot if they can't even recruit enough students to attend? I definitely wouldn't want to be employed at one of these places.
toshiko
Universities in Northern suffer more.
toshiko
In Yamaguchi prefecture, sons attend. Univ in Tokyo. Daughters in. Private zU in Tokyo. So local U does improve carricuruum.
gogogo
@Kobe White Bar Owner : Get with this times man, you are showing your age, even Harvard and MIT have online degrees.
Luddite
Reputable universities across the globe offer online degrees, they have just the same courses, essays and exams as if you were attending in person. Look at the Open University in the UK, are you saying those degrees are worthless? What about Birkbeck? As someone who used to interview candidates for jobs in health care I can assure you those with online degrees from accredited universities are just as educated and more motivated than those who studied on campus.
toshiko
I periodically receiive invitations from a Souuuthern Calif. Univ. I graduated in early 1960s. It offers subjects related to what you majored. Good for older retired people who don't want to commute to campus. My children receive from univ they graduated.
kohakuebisu
This story confirms it, but universities in Japan are "schools you go to when you are 18". Not 20 or 25 or whenever the desire or need to attend an institute of higher education grabs you, you go there when you are 18. So for a country with a declining population of 18 year olds, demand is going to fall. Universities need to be redefined as filling a need for skills and knowledge, not just a middle-class rite of passage for 18 year olds.
The main cause of population decline in my part of inaka is tenshutsu, in this case young people leaving to go to college or a job somewhere and not coming back. It's true that they are being born in lower numbers, but the ones who are not sticking around is the bigger issue. Half of them are women of course, and with the job prospects for them in inaka, I can't say I blame them.
Utrack
I agree with gogogo.... Offer online degrees .......