Japan to nurture young scientists by integrating education programs

great news. but get rid of sampan/kohai system.

reduce the budget on English failures and put it back into successful science

Doesn't matter how much money you pour on this program if the society will just hammer down those with new ideas.

The move comes as concerns grow over Japan's faltering scientific research performance in recent years amid a decline in budget.

As in money from the government?

I remember a couple years ago a big outcry about Japans attempt to reform humanities and social science education

Does Japan have Open University? I don't know. I personally think that a lot of humanities, classics, philosophy and social science type education should be shifted to online study and removed from on campus study. If you cut on campus study and streamline an online offering of these courses you could potentially save a lot of money and funnel it back into STEM.

There is no need to offer courses based on established classical books and texts when you can buy them from Amazon for spare change or say Penguin Classics. Probably not a direct correlation in circumstances between many Western countries and Japan but I still think there is a big opportunities for savings in government funding of those university courses and everything that goes with it, like lecturers and professors.

I think this is a path many Western governments will take given budget constraints. Could save billions a year.

With Super Science high schools and the International Baccalaureate, it looks like genuine efforts are being made to improve education in (some) public system schools in Japan. I hope these initiatives can succeed.

He said under the current system, even students who go through special math and science education programs at designated high schools cannot immediately move on to full-fledged research upon entering universities as they would be initially required to take liberal arts courses.

Why on earth would science specialists be made to study arts courses at university? Crazy system - sounds more like an extension of high school than tertiary education.

Sounds great. The "holding back" mentality needs to change.