Temple Japan’s undergraduate student numbers double since 2001

Temple University, Japan Campus (TUJ) announced Friday that the 2008 fall semester undergraduate enrollment reached 850. This marks a doubling in the number of enrollments since the 2001 fall semester when it received 425 enrollments.

The growth in undergraduate numbers has been dramatic in recent years. While enrollments were stable or experienced slight growth between 2001 and 2004, between 2005 and 2007 annual growth was in the double digits, and easily passed the 800 level in 2008.

The key reason for this significant increase was TUJ’s designation by MEXT as the first “Foreign University Japan Campus” in February 2005, which enabled foreign students to apply for student visas. This has resulted in a major increase in students from North America and Europe, which now comprise of one-third of the student body. In the fall 2008 semester, the ratio of Japanese and non-Japanese students is close to 50:50, and some 50 nationalities are represented in the student body.

Temple said an indirect contributor to the surge in foreign students in recent years is the dramatic expansion and deepening in interest in Japanese society and culture around the world that goes beyond the traditional Mt Fuji and geisha image. While Japanese manga and anime have been attracting growing international attention, the current interest in Japanese pop culture is much wider in scope, including music and drama, which is attracting surprising numbers of the younger generations around the world.

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