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Japan's Universities Are Failing

157 points by Arkaad 10y ago

ajeet_dhaliwal 10y ago
Why would the Japanese look to a London based publication for validation of their rankings among Asian universities? This sort of thing is not an exact science and it's a shame Asia (I know India does this a lot) continues to hold the West (UK/USA specifically) as some great arbitrator and moderator of the world when they may have their own vested interests about things - and of course vice versa.
- azinman2 10y ago
  The question should be does that report have merit, not which nationality produced it.
  - ajeet_dhaliwal 10y ago
    How would you measure if it has merit? No one can know for sure if the report has merit, it's their opinion based on their metrics and what they consider to be important properties to measure, like I said it's not an exact science.
    - azinman2 10y ago
      I don't know anything about the report, but one would hope that these metrics are published and have some verifiability. One could create empirical metrics based on research output, monetization, patents, keynote speeches, citation counts, etc. It doesn't have to be so fuzzy. My point is not to be knee-jerk about the nationality source, but rather look at the claims and evaluate them. If they previously ranked Tokyo University so highly -- should we throw that out too?
      - icantdrive55 10y ago
        "One could create empirical metrics based on research output, monetization, patents, keynote speeches, citation counts, etc. It doesn't have to be so fuzzy." Would it really help the average student? I went to Berkley for a semester, and in some courses we watched the professor on video. He literally phoned it in. I actually had a better learning experience at my local community college. This is just my subjective experience. I have known too many people who literally drank/hallucinated their way through an Ivy League school. They graduate, and don't tell anyone the truth about their fancy college learning experience. There's no test at the end to correlate into an empirical metric. It's just, "I graduated from this UC, or Whatever!". I would like to see every school that accepts federal/state tax money give their students a standardized test, and future funding would be based on the collective students score. It would have to be a fair balanced test. Instead of I graduated from MIT; it would be I graduated with a 95%. It might level out the playing field? It would prevent networking--maybe? It would prevent having to "kiss ass"? It would prevent me from throwing up in my mouth when a new Princeton graduate puts on the horned rimmed glasses shortly after graduation, and just expects respect.
    - omginternets 10y ago
      Indeed, postmodernism is not a science at all. Test of us non-postmodernists value an education system capable of producing competent elites, who in turn produce value for society (measure that how you like). By that measure, it's pretty apparent that Japan's universities are doing poorly. And the Japanese agree with this, in case you missed it. Please stop with this nauseating pedantry.
      - gydfi 10y ago
        Japan is going pretty well last I checked. It's one of the few places that is successfully transitioning to a lower birth rate via population shrinkage rather than mass immigration, enabling them to maintain their own culture and people.
        thaumasiotes 10y ago
        Well, for a very unintuitive value of "maintain their own people". A low birth rate has pretty direct effects on that.
        csa 10y ago
        Serious question... do you or have you recently lived in Japan? Japanese people don't think things are going so well. Many knowledgeable non-Japanese don't think that things are going so well. My personal take is that Japan is taking a huge gamble by taking on a massive amount of debt relative to their GDP. The piper will need to be paid at some point. John Mauldin had described the Japanese economy as a bug in search of a windshield. Based on what my Japanese friends in the financial sector say, they agree. Everyone is just crossing their fingers now and hoping that something... anything... happens to force a redirect. No one is quite sure what this will look like (I personally think yen will take a big hit, but that's just a guess).
        konceptz 10y ago
        I've been told that the olympics in 2020 is one such possible happening.
        10y ago
    - hx87 10y ago
      And why should we discount an opinion just because the source is from outside the country? Internal biases are every bit as severe as outside biases.
- coolandsmartrr 10y ago
  > London based It's US based. Perhaps you're thinking of The Economist?
  - foota 10y ago
    "Uiversity of Tokyo lost its number one ranking, falling to number seven, in the Asia university rankings published by the Times Higher Education of London"
  - Naritai 10y ago
    The article says the rankings were published by Times Higher Education of London.
  - ajeet_dhaliwal 10y ago
    See the first paragraph of the article, the rankings are by Times Higher Education.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dwg 10y ago
  Are you suggesting they should ignore perspectives outside of "Asia"?
- anonymousDan 10y ago
  Yup, those rankings are completely subjective bullshit. Something like 50% of the score is based on asking a selection of academics what their opinion of a university is.
  - natoliniak 10y ago
    I agree, although reputation is closer to 25% of the score. The rest is based on factors like number of citations, impact, which in my opinion benefits institutions from English speaking countries.
- jimmywanger 10y ago
  > Why would the Japanese look to a London based publicatio This is playing identity politics at its worst. You're saying that a London based publication might have vested interest about things, and therefore somebody from a foreign country shouldn't care about their rankings at all. You don't address how the rankings are formed, if they're accurate or not, or if they're useful in measuring the economic value of the graduates. You also don't propose another ranking system/methodology/evaluation system. You're basically bringing nothing to the table except "Asia has an inferiority complex" which is a statement you don't back up with facts.
yammajr 10y ago
Looks like an interesting article after the first couple of paragraphs, but the paywall makes it hard to say really.
- forbiddenlake 10y ago
  Click "Web" at the top, and click the non-Hacker News link
  - XaspR8d 10y ago
    Still paywalled?
  - yammajr 10y ago
    Thanks for pointing that out, it's a useful feature, but that doesn't get around the paywall here.
    - TorKlingberg 10y ago
      Try opening the 'web' link in a different browser, maybe in private mode. That worked for me.
      - yammajr 10y ago
        No go on incognito, but switching browsers did it. Thanks
- titanix2 10y ago
  This seems to be a copy-paste of the article: https://sanrikufukkou.com/2016/11/08/japan-gets-schooled/ https://sanrikufukkou.com/2016/11/08/japan-gets-schooled/
  - DalasNoin 10y ago
    seems to be offline
ganfortran 10y ago
Anything growing in current Japan except their age?
- azatris 10y ago
  The fashion scene there is pretty big.
- purple-again 10y ago
  I hear they dabble in video games...
- lostlogin 10y ago
  Some of their car designs are rather great.
- chris_chan_ 10y ago
  I heard their anime is also kicking ass too. Recent anime like this one http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5311514/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5311514/ is best anime I have seem lately.
- codedokode 10y ago
  Idol groups and robot development.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  Waistlines
tsul 10y ago
I’ve always heard that uni is a bit of a formality in Japan, and that most career-minded individuals expect to be trained and mentored on the job when they enter the corporate world. Not sure how true that is or if the article touches on that, since it’s paywalled.
- dwg 10y ago
  Generally true to my knowledge, but I believe University of Tokyo and a few other top universities are an exception, especially in the sciences.
  - santaclaus 10y ago
    Tokyo University puts out some seriously badass researchers. Think Caltech, MIT, and ETH Zürich quality.
    - aerioux 10y ago
      Sorry in what field? I would argue the number of these (as a %) on average are much lower (metric: top tier publications) Also if you're looking at Asian univs, Tsinghua, Peking, SNU, NUS, KAIST and (CUHK/HKUST) should be there too ;)
- curiousgal 10y ago
  Try this link[0]. 0.https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/japan/2016-10-31/japan-gets-schooled?cid=soc-fb-rdr https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/japan/2016-10-31/jap...
- twblalock 10y ago
  My Japanese friends have told me that it's difficult to get in, and requires a lot of study for the entrance exam, but you don't have to work hard after you get in.
  - pbk1 10y ago
    that would seem to make it comparable to a number of "elite" American universities ;)
mkaziz 10y ago
I really don't see a way out for Japan that's not immigration. It might lead to social upheaval, but it sounds like that kind of change is sorely needed. A well executed immigration policy could inject fresh blood into that country.
- Leavethebugin 10y ago
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Japan could simply incentivize its population to marry, have kids, etc. Why is your first thought "necessary societal upheaval" through immigration? Reminds me of a Karl I read about.
- thevardanian 10y ago
  Until at what point? Eventually the entire world is going to have to face a demographic change in the form of population reduction considering the whole 9 billion+ thing. You can't just continue to import more people from abroad and believe that it's a long term solution. There's also a case to be made for culture, and preservation of unique ethnicity.
  - omegaworks 10y ago
    >There's also a case to be made for culture, and preservation of unique ethnicity. These are two different things. Make the case for the latter.
    - drdeca 10y ago
      I'm not making the claim in question, but I thought it might be interesting to try to give a not-obviously-completely-wrong line of reasoning for why a /variation/ of the claim could be plausible. Could there be some advantage in having multiple populations with some positive and non-negligible but still not super high amount of mixing, over having a single population which, uh, mixes with itself "uniformly" ? Like, what if random genetic variation over time in the different groups going in "different directions" but always mixing with the others a bit might allow for more diversity of things being "tried" than in the single group, and maybe this would result in "good ideas" being "tried"/"discovered" more often, and which could then spread to the other groups. The "good ideas" would of course spread to the other groups more slowly than if it was all in one group, but maybe there could be some level of mixing where an improvement in the rate of "good ideas" being "found" was enough to outweigh the cost of "good ideas" taking longer to spread to different groups, so that all the groups benefit? HOWEVER: note that I am not advocating making any decisions based on this argument. Even if such a level of mixing/not-mixing exists which would be better than having it all be one group, that doesn't mean that that level of mixing is less mixing than would happen if this argument were not considered, so this argument does not mean decreasing mixing would be good. If the level of (genetic) mixing has an impact at all (I don't know if it does), it seems equally possible that the optimal level is greater than the current level. (Maybe if the level of mixing were "too low", then the mixing would become less effective? In the extreme (unrealistic) case, if the different groups became almost unable to mix, as a result of mixing too rarely, that might be very bad, because then "good ideas" couldn't spread from group to group?) And even if some levels of mixing would result in better results (e.g. in health) over time than others, and even if a different level were better than the level that would be the result if no one tried to influence this level, that doesn't mean it would be good to try to influence the level towards that "better" level. Attempting to influence that level might be e.g. dehumanizing or un-virtuous, or bad for other reasons. I want to make it very clear that I'm just talking about this as an intellectual exercise, and am not advocating any actions based on this argument. These lines of reasoning were ignoring the fact that the groups being considered are people, and really, the fact that these people are /people/ makes things relating to that much more important than any of the other considerations, and when they conflict, the fact that these are /people/ takes priority over any concerns about like, "gene flow" or whatever. If you are concerned that the ideas in this comment might be repeated in harmful ways I am willing to delete this comment upon request, as long as this website lets me do that.
shm224 10y ago
According to the same survey by Times Higher Education, Harvard is #6 in US! So why is Harvard in such decline? /s As soon as their economy picks up, I bet that THE and others would start praising the virtues of the Japanese education system again, regardless of any changes (or no change) in education.
- csa 10y ago
  This is unlikely. Japan has some legit research facilities and actually quite good academic resources. The problem is that the professors/researchers are heavily leaning towards small wins that get published locally rather than research that would get attention abroad. The people I knew did this in order to improve their job security and/or job prospects. Basically, having a long list of largely meaningless publications was better received by tenure and hiring committees than making fewer but more substantive contributions. To use a baseball metaphor, they value through their actions the singles hitters more than the doubles or home run hitters. The government is trying to encourage people to take more risks, but for most of the academics, it just doesn't make sense. The reward for good international-grade research is essentially zero, but the cost of going bust (e.g., a big project without strong publication outcomes) is perceived as being high (although I'm not sure it actually is). Furthermore, the very best researchers are going to the US and Europe. Research labs there value their Japanese peers more than Japanese labs do in terms of both money and research prestige.
  - hkmurakami 10y ago
    I've heard that one of the contributing factors is that the domestic academic publication industry is big and strong enough that careers can be supported while never publishing internationally. Many countries' academics have no choice but to publish internationally. Analogous to how a strong domestic economy has impeded a need for better English education and international business skills.
    - csa 10y ago
      The domestic Japanese publication industry certainly does carry enough weight to build a career as a professor on. The question is whether is actually should. Many of the journals are essentially pay to play -- join an organization, present at the conference, write a paper for the proceedings that is not completely absurd (slight absurdity is ok), ship $100, and you will get published. There are journals that are more rigorous, and getting into these at last once is often a key to better employment, but these are the exceptions rather than the rule. Furthermore, I would say that most of the work published in the competitive domestic Japan journals would not be publishable abroad both due to limited impact as well as (in some fields) questionable methodology. As a simple example of the low quality that I found in some journals, many academics were unable to interpret standard t-tests correctly in their evaluation of their research. It brought a tear to my eye.
saxonklaxon 10y ago
Why should we need to attend universities? Apart from the inexplicit or hands-on component of technical training, learning can be done via the web. Leaving home and becoming independent can be rehearsed by travelling or taking a job elsewhere. Finding a spouse can be done online. Credibility and commitment can be measured by some combination of IQ testing and sitting outside the employer's office (a la Fight Club). The idea that universities will help you to think independently is untrue. They create conformity. Indeed, as historical religious institutions, they were founded for this purpose.
lanevorockz 10y ago
If Japanese universities are failing, how they are leaders in science?
- akhilcacharya 10y ago
  Are they? I hear more about American, British, and Chinese universities and research institutions than Japanese institutions.
- hx87 10y ago
  Brilliant research universities can be terrible educators, and vice versa.
- aerioux 10y ago
  Can you qualify 'leaders in science' ? It's hard to quantify a broad statement :)
rootsudo 10y ago
I applied to a university in Japan and got in. Essentially it's hard to get in, once you in, you pass. Work culture in Japan and school is a bit toxic.
emmelaich 10y ago
I suspect (and I read this somewhere) that all the huge investment in infrastructure (dams, trains, highways) has not paid off. And now they're stuck with the debt associated plus the ongoing cost of maintenance.
flor1s 10y ago
Being a PhD student in Japan (and a non-native English speaker) I agree with many points in the article. Some frustrating things about my own experience: - In my lab, all of the papers written by Japanese students have to be checked by foreign students (which are mostly non-native speakers). The quality of the writing is typically less than mediocre, with a few exceptions. - We have a seminar every week in which the Japanese students talk in Japanese and will get questions only by the Japanese, while the foreign students present in English and will only get questions from the other foreign students. The environment is a bit toxic. - I have a monthly meeting of 30 minutes with my supervisor (should be bi-weekly but he almost never has time for it). Those meetings are usually about which journal or conference we should submit an article to, seldom and barely scratching the surface of what my research is about. - Teachers who give their classes in English will get many complaints from Japanese students. In the end most of them switch (back) to teaching in Japanese again. - This year I will probably have to go to some sort of job hunting myself, but I'm mostly considering jobs in academia because of the job hunting process for companies seems inhumane. I have heard of cases where students join a company and end up working on projects not remotely related to their research interests. I often blame myself for not speaking enough Japanese and because of that missing opportunities, but at the same time I am of the opinion that education on the masters and PhD level should be given in English because that seems to be the de facto language of international academia.
- deleted 10y ago
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- deleted 10y ago
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- hkmurakami 10y ago
  I've worked in Japan in a mega Corp R&D division. There are candidate pools that are "potential hires" with no assignment pre offer, and there are "specialist hires" where you know the team you'll be assigned to. Only accept the latter. The job hunt process isn't nearly as bad for technical hires as it is for humanities grads. I completely agree that grad level work should be done in English. I know a few brilliant researchers at Stanford who will likely head back to Japan to take academic posts because their English (and mainly politics of academia) skills just weren't good enough, and their taking the "wiser route out". I don't know your field, but I hear good things about places like Hitachi Chuou Research.
teee 10y ago
As an Asian and knowing many Japanese friends, I just said this report is true. However not only universities in Japan, all the universities in asian countries are facing structural problems in college education. People treat college degrees like their passports/certificates to get higher positions in society and better works. They are willing to study harder to enter colleges, and then play for 4 years in university. It's about cultural problems, especially bureaucracy. It exists in asian blood. People would not like to face the truth, but obey the order. Maybe it's originated from Prussian education system and chinese bureaucratic system(former Roman Empire in Asian), and finally cause the failures of education and creativity.
- hobaak 10y ago
  As an Asian, it is true that most of the countries in Asia work hard to enter college but in Korea, this is no longer true that they party in university. Tightening job market drove students to study job-related certificates and tests such as Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC). This is so grueling for young generations with grow student debts. Students often defer their graduations to appear fresh in the job market. http://thediplomat.com/2014/05/south-korean-students-delaying-graduation/ http://thediplomat.com/2014/05/south-korean-students-delayin...
homme 10y ago
I spent a thanksgiving back in junior year with a japanese student (along with a jewish bro) in my american uni smoking chronic and covering led zepplin guitar in between turkey eating. Japan needs to send more college students to the US.
doall 10y ago
One little-known fact is that to be accepted by todai is not that difficult compared to be accepted by todai risan (the medical doctor course). About 3000 people enter todai every year but only 100 are accepted to risan. Recently as a trend, almost all of the top students in the very top high school try to go there and it is a problem which is considered a huge waste of intelligent people in Japan. I have heard that one todai dropout took 10 years to be accepted by todai risan. The trend continues for students entering other medical doctor courses at other prestigious universities, such as Kyoto University and so on.
euske 10y ago
I graduated one of the top schools in Japan and went to the US to get a PhD. (But somehow I got patriotic and came back to Japan after that, don't judge me.) In many ways, Japan feels like a gridlocked country. And people (especially young) already know it but can't do anything about it. I'll point out that the heart of the problem is its lifetime employment system, which the entire economy and social system of Japan is optimized for and depending upon. So you wanna change schools? You have to change the system and reposition many teachers, but nope, it's not allowed. Teachers are well protected by the Japanese labor law and they can't do any other job (and from what I saw they're particularly inflexible work force). You want more diverse students? Good luck with finding a good career path for them, because under the lifetime employment system you can get good choices only when you're young, and you have to stay in the same company for the rest of your life. Again, many people assume that way and many financial systems in Japan are built upon this assumption. And finally, you want many more competitive researchers? Nooo, because there are too many mediocre researchers that have tenure already. You can't compete with them. Again, blame the lifetime employment system. I, too, honestly don't know what's a good exit path from this. Personally I think having more immigrants is a way to go, but then there's this right-wing people and Trumpism going rampage right now. Sigh.
- michaelbuddy 10y ago
  Adding more immigrants is a good way to destabilize the country. Just be the change you want to see. Man up, and create. Building things rather than destabilizing or disrupting other people is always the best thing for everyone. Just saying "oh all of you need to change, so let's bring in immigrants to force you" is a really strange mindset. It sounds quite unpatriotic to me.
- fl0wenol 10y ago
  I think the way you fix a situation like this is to create new, informal institutions. Young people have to feel empowered and have pride in building small communities, and by extension, small businesses. There will always be pressure from others to stop screwing around in the dirt, but you have to preserve and have the desire to want to be living with uncertainty. Over decades I think you can chip away at the fossilized foundations of old institutions (big government, big business, the schools that feed into it and the cultural lockdown they have on young people)

157 points by Arkaad 10y ago

Why would the Japanese look to a London based publication for validation of their rankings among Asian universities? This sort of thing is not an exact science and it's a shame Asia (I know India does this a lot) continues to hold the West (UK/USA specifically) as some great arbitrator and moderator of the world when they may have their own vested interests about things - and of course vice versa.

azinman2 10y ago
The question should be does that report have merit, not which nationality produced it.
- ajeet_dhaliwal 10y ago
  How would you measure if it has merit? No one can know for sure if the report has merit, it's their opinion based on their metrics and what they consider to be important properties to measure, like I said it's not an exact science.
  - azinman2 10y ago
    I don't know anything about the report, but one would hope that these metrics are published and have some verifiability. One could create empirical metrics based on research output, monetization, patents, keynote speeches, citation counts, etc. It doesn't have to be so fuzzy. My point is not to be knee-jerk about the nationality source, but rather look at the claims and evaluate them. If they previously ranked Tokyo University so highly -- should we throw that out too?
    - icantdrive55 10y ago
      "One could create empirical metrics based on research output, monetization, patents, keynote speeches, citation counts, etc. It doesn't have to be so fuzzy." Would it really help the average student? I went to Berkley for a semester, and in some courses we watched the professor on video. He literally phoned it in. I actually had a better learning experience at my local community college. This is just my subjective experience. I have known too many people who literally drank/hallucinated their way through an Ivy League school. They graduate, and don't tell anyone the truth about their fancy college learning experience. There's no test at the end to correlate into an empirical metric. It's just, "I graduated from this UC, or Whatever!". I would like to see every school that accepts federal/state tax money give their students a standardized test, and future funding would be based on the collective students score. It would have to be a fair balanced test. Instead of I graduated from MIT; it would be I graduated with a 95%. It might level out the playing field? It would prevent networking--maybe? It would prevent having to "kiss ass"? It would prevent me from throwing up in my mouth when a new Princeton graduate puts on the horned rimmed glasses shortly after graduation, and just expects respect.
  - omginternets 10y ago
    Indeed, postmodernism is not a science at all. Test of us non-postmodernists value an education system capable of producing competent elites, who in turn produce value for society (measure that how you like). By that measure, it's pretty apparent that Japan's universities are doing poorly. And the Japanese agree with this, in case you missed it. Please stop with this nauseating pedantry.
    - gydfi 10y ago
      Japan is going pretty well last I checked. It's one of the few places that is successfully transitioning to a lower birth rate via population shrinkage rather than mass immigration, enabling them to maintain their own culture and people.
      - thaumasiotes 10y ago
        Well, for a very unintuitive value of "maintain their own people". A low birth rate has pretty direct effects on that.
      - csa 10y ago
        Serious question... do you or have you recently lived in Japan? Japanese people don't think things are going so well. Many knowledgeable non-Japanese don't think that things are going so well. My personal take is that Japan is taking a huge gamble by taking on a massive amount of debt relative to their GDP. The piper will need to be paid at some point. John Mauldin had described the Japanese economy as a bug in search of a windshield. Based on what my Japanese friends in the financial sector say, they agree. Everyone is just crossing their fingers now and hoping that something... anything... happens to force a redirect. No one is quite sure what this will look like (I personally think yen will take a big hit, but that's just a guess).
        konceptz 10y ago
        I've been told that the olympics in 2020 is one such possible happening.
        10y ago
  - hx87 10y ago
    And why should we discount an opinion just because the source is from outside the country? Internal biases are every bit as severe as outside biases.
coolandsmartrr 10y ago
> London based It's US based. Perhaps you're thinking of The Economist?
- foota 10y ago
  "Uiversity of Tokyo lost its number one ranking, falling to number seven, in the Asia university rankings published by the Times Higher Education of London"
- Naritai 10y ago
  The article says the rankings were published by Times Higher Education of London.
- ajeet_dhaliwal 10y ago
  See the first paragraph of the article, the rankings are by Times Higher Education.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dwg 10y ago
Are you suggesting they should ignore perspectives outside of "Asia"?
anonymousDan 10y ago
Yup, those rankings are completely subjective bullshit. Something like 50% of the score is based on asking a selection of academics what their opinion of a university is.
- natoliniak 10y ago
  I agree, although reputation is closer to 25% of the score. The rest is based on factors like number of citations, impact, which in my opinion benefits institutions from English speaking countries.
jimmywanger 10y ago
> Why would the Japanese look to a London based publicatio This is playing identity politics at its worst. You're saying that a London based publication might have vested interest about things, and therefore somebody from a foreign country shouldn't care about their rankings at all. You don't address how the rankings are formed, if they're accurate or not, or if they're useful in measuring the economic value of the graduates. You also don't propose another ranking system/methodology/evaluation system. You're basically bringing nothing to the table except "Asia has an inferiority complex" which is a statement you don't back up with facts.

yammajr 10y ago

Looks like an interesting article after the first couple of paragraphs, but the paywall makes it hard to say really.

forbiddenlake 10y ago
Click "Web" at the top, and click the non-Hacker News link
- XaspR8d 10y ago
  Still paywalled?
- yammajr 10y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out, it's a useful feature, but that doesn't get around the paywall here.
  - TorKlingberg 10y ago
    Try opening the 'web' link in a different browser, maybe in private mode. That worked for me.
    - yammajr 10y ago
      No go on incognito, but switching browsers did it. Thanks
titanix2 10y ago
This seems to be a copy-paste of the article: https://sanrikufukkou.com/2016/11/08/japan-gets-schooled/ https://sanrikufukkou.com/2016/11/08/japan-gets-schooled/
- DalasNoin 10y ago
  seems to be offline

ganfortran 10y ago

Anything growing in current Japan except their age?

azatris 10y ago
The fashion scene there is pretty big.
purple-again 10y ago
I hear they dabble in video games...
lostlogin 10y ago
Some of their car designs are rather great.
chris_chan_ 10y ago
I heard their anime is also kicking ass too. Recent anime like this one http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5311514/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5311514/ is best anime I have seem lately.
codedokode 10y ago
Idol groups and robot development.
kalleboo 10y ago
Waistlines

tsul 10y ago

I’ve always heard that uni is a bit of a formality in Japan, and that most career-minded individuals expect to be trained and mentored on the job when they enter the corporate world. Not sure how true that is or if the article touches on that, since it’s paywalled.

dwg 10y ago
Generally true to my knowledge, but I believe University of Tokyo and a few other top universities are an exception, especially in the sciences.
- santaclaus 10y ago
  Tokyo University puts out some seriously badass researchers. Think Caltech, MIT, and ETH Zürich quality.
  - aerioux 10y ago
    Sorry in what field? I would argue the number of these (as a %) on average are much lower (metric: top tier publications) Also if you're looking at Asian univs, Tsinghua, Peking, SNU, NUS, KAIST and (CUHK/HKUST) should be there too ;)
curiousgal 10y ago
Try this link[0]. 0.https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/japan/2016-10-31/japan-gets-schooled?cid=soc-fb-rdr https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/japan/2016-10-31/jap...
twblalock 10y ago
My Japanese friends have told me that it's difficult to get in, and requires a lot of study for the entrance exam, but you don't have to work hard after you get in.
- pbk1 10y ago
  that would seem to make it comparable to a number of "elite" American universities ;)

mkaziz 10y ago

I really don't see a way out for Japan that's not immigration. It might lead to social upheaval, but it sounds like that kind of change is sorely needed. A well executed immigration policy could inject fresh blood into that country.

Leavethebugin 10y ago
When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Japan could simply incentivize its population to marry, have kids, etc. Why is your first thought "necessary societal upheaval" through immigration? Reminds me of a Karl I read about.
thevardanian 10y ago
Until at what point? Eventually the entire world is going to have to face a demographic change in the form of population reduction considering the whole 9 billion+ thing. You can't just continue to import more people from abroad and believe that it's a long term solution. There's also a case to be made for culture, and preservation of unique ethnicity.
- omegaworks 10y ago
  >There's also a case to be made for culture, and preservation of unique ethnicity. These are two different things. Make the case for the latter.
  - drdeca 10y ago
    I'm not making the claim in question, but I thought it might be interesting to try to give a not-obviously-completely-wrong line of reasoning for why a /variation/ of the claim could be plausible. Could there be some advantage in having multiple populations with some positive and non-negligible but still not super high amount of mixing, over having a single population which, uh, mixes with itself "uniformly" ? Like, what if random genetic variation over time in the different groups going in "different directions" but always mixing with the others a bit might allow for more diversity of things being "tried" than in the single group, and maybe this would result in "good ideas" being "tried"/"discovered" more often, and which could then spread to the other groups. The "good ideas" would of course spread to the other groups more slowly than if it was all in one group, but maybe there could be some level of mixing where an improvement in the rate of "good ideas" being "found" was enough to outweigh the cost of "good ideas" taking longer to spread to different groups, so that all the groups benefit? HOWEVER: note that I am not advocating making any decisions based on this argument. Even if such a level of mixing/not-mixing exists which would be better than having it all be one group, that doesn't mean that that level of mixing is less mixing than would happen if this argument were not considered, so this argument does not mean decreasing mixing would be good. If the level of (genetic) mixing has an impact at all (I don't know if it does), it seems equally possible that the optimal level is greater than the current level. (Maybe if the level of mixing were "too low", then the mixing would become less effective? In the extreme (unrealistic) case, if the different groups became almost unable to mix, as a result of mixing too rarely, that might be very bad, because then "good ideas" couldn't spread from group to group?) And even if some levels of mixing would result in better results (e.g. in health) over time than others, and even if a different level were better than the level that would be the result if no one tried to influence this level, that doesn't mean it would be good to try to influence the level towards that "better" level. Attempting to influence that level might be e.g. dehumanizing or un-virtuous, or bad for other reasons. I want to make it very clear that I'm just talking about this as an intellectual exercise, and am not advocating any actions based on this argument. These lines of reasoning were ignoring the fact that the groups being considered are people, and really, the fact that these people are /people/ makes things relating to that much more important than any of the other considerations, and when they conflict, the fact that these are /people/ takes priority over any concerns about like, "gene flow" or whatever. If you are concerned that the ideas in this comment might be repeated in harmful ways I am willing to delete this comment upon request, as long as this website lets me do that.

shm224 10y ago

According to the same survey by Times Higher Education, Harvard is #6 in US! So why is Harvard in such decline? /s As soon as their economy picks up, I bet that THE and others would start praising the virtues of the Japanese education system again, regardless of any changes (or no change) in education.

csa 10y ago
This is unlikely. Japan has some legit research facilities and actually quite good academic resources. The problem is that the professors/researchers are heavily leaning towards small wins that get published locally rather than research that would get attention abroad. The people I knew did this in order to improve their job security and/or job prospects. Basically, having a long list of largely meaningless publications was better received by tenure and hiring committees than making fewer but more substantive contributions. To use a baseball metaphor, they value through their actions the singles hitters more than the doubles or home run hitters. The government is trying to encourage people to take more risks, but for most of the academics, it just doesn't make sense. The reward for good international-grade research is essentially zero, but the cost of going bust (e.g., a big project without strong publication outcomes) is perceived as being high (although I'm not sure it actually is). Furthermore, the very best researchers are going to the US and Europe. Research labs there value their Japanese peers more than Japanese labs do in terms of both money and research prestige.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  I've heard that one of the contributing factors is that the domestic academic publication industry is big and strong enough that careers can be supported while never publishing internationally. Many countries' academics have no choice but to publish internationally. Analogous to how a strong domestic economy has impeded a need for better English education and international business skills.
  - csa 10y ago
    The domestic Japanese publication industry certainly does carry enough weight to build a career as a professor on. The question is whether is actually should. Many of the journals are essentially pay to play -- join an organization, present at the conference, write a paper for the proceedings that is not completely absurd (slight absurdity is ok), ship $100, and you will get published. There are journals that are more rigorous, and getting into these at last once is often a key to better employment, but these are the exceptions rather than the rule. Furthermore, I would say that most of the work published in the competitive domestic Japan journals would not be publishable abroad both due to limited impact as well as (in some fields) questionable methodology. As a simple example of the low quality that I found in some journals, many academics were unable to interpret standard t-tests correctly in their evaluation of their research. It brought a tear to my eye.

saxonklaxon 10y ago

Why should we need to attend universities? Apart from the inexplicit or hands-on component of technical training, learning can be done via the web. Leaving home and becoming independent can be rehearsed by travelling or taking a job elsewhere. Finding a spouse can be done online. Credibility and commitment can be measured by some combination of IQ testing and sitting outside the employer's office (a la Fight Club). The idea that universities will help you to think independently is untrue. They create conformity. Indeed, as historical religious institutions, they were founded for this purpose.

lanevorockz 10y ago

If Japanese universities are failing, how they are leaders in science?

akhilcacharya 10y ago
Are they? I hear more about American, British, and Chinese universities and research institutions than Japanese institutions.
hx87 10y ago
Brilliant research universities can be terrible educators, and vice versa.
aerioux 10y ago
Can you qualify 'leaders in science' ? It's hard to quantify a broad statement :)

rootsudo 10y ago

I applied to a university in Japan and got in. Essentially it's hard to get in, once you in, you pass. Work culture in Japan and school is a bit toxic.

emmelaich 10y ago

I suspect (and I read this somewhere) that all the huge investment in infrastructure (dams, trains, highways) has not paid off. And now they're stuck with the debt associated plus the ongoing cost of maintenance.

flor1s 10y ago

Being a PhD student in Japan (and a non-native English speaker) I agree with many points in the article. Some frustrating things about my own experience: - In my lab, all of the papers written by Japanese students have to be checked by foreign students (which are mostly non-native speakers). The quality of the writing is typically less than mediocre, with a few exceptions. - We have a seminar every week in which the Japanese students talk in Japanese and will get questions only by the Japanese, while the foreign students present in English and will only get questions from the other foreign students. The environment is a bit toxic. - I have a monthly meeting of 30 minutes with my supervisor (should be bi-weekly but he almost never has time for it). Those meetings are usually about which journal or conference we should submit an article to, seldom and barely scratching the surface of what my research is about. - Teachers who give their classes in English will get many complaints from Japanese students. In the end most of them switch (back) to teaching in Japanese again. - This year I will probably have to go to some sort of job hunting myself, but I'm mostly considering jobs in academia because of the job hunting process for companies seems inhumane. I have heard of cases where students join a company and end up working on projects not remotely related to their research interests. I often blame myself for not speaking enough Japanese and because of that missing opportunities, but at the same time I am of the opinion that education on the masters and PhD level should be given in English because that seems to be the de facto language of international academia.

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hkmurakami 10y ago
I've worked in Japan in a mega Corp R&D division. There are candidate pools that are "potential hires" with no assignment pre offer, and there are "specialist hires" where you know the team you'll be assigned to. Only accept the latter. The job hunt process isn't nearly as bad for technical hires as it is for humanities grads. I completely agree that grad level work should be done in English. I know a few brilliant researchers at Stanford who will likely head back to Japan to take academic posts because their English (and mainly politics of academia) skills just weren't good enough, and their taking the "wiser route out". I don't know your field, but I hear good things about places like Hitachi Chuou Research.

teee 10y ago

As an Asian and knowing many Japanese friends, I just said this report is true. However not only universities in Japan, all the universities in asian countries are facing structural problems in college education. People treat college degrees like their passports/certificates to get higher positions in society and better works. They are willing to study harder to enter colleges, and then play for 4 years in university. It's about cultural problems, especially bureaucracy. It exists in asian blood. People would not like to face the truth, but obey the order. Maybe it's originated from Prussian education system and chinese bureaucratic system(former Roman Empire in Asian), and finally cause the failures of education and creativity.

hobaak 10y ago
As an Asian, it is true that most of the countries in Asia work hard to enter college but in Korea, this is no longer true that they party in university. Tightening job market drove students to study job-related certificates and tests such as Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC). This is so grueling for young generations with grow student debts. Students often defer their graduations to appear fresh in the job market. http://thediplomat.com/2014/05/south-korean-students-delaying-graduation/ http://thediplomat.com/2014/05/south-korean-students-delayin...

homme 10y ago

I spent a thanksgiving back in junior year with a japanese student (along with a jewish bro) in my american uni smoking chronic and covering led zepplin guitar in between turkey eating. Japan needs to send more college students to the US.

doall 10y ago

One little-known fact is that to be accepted by todai is not that difficult compared to be accepted by todai risan (the medical doctor course). About 3000 people enter todai every year but only 100 are accepted to risan. Recently as a trend, almost all of the top students in the very top high school try to go there and it is a problem which is considered a huge waste of intelligent people in Japan. I have heard that one todai dropout took 10 years to be accepted by todai risan. The trend continues for students entering other medical doctor courses at other prestigious universities, such as Kyoto University and so on.

euske 10y ago

I graduated one of the top schools in Japan and went to the US to get a PhD. (But somehow I got patriotic and came back to Japan after that, don't judge me.) In many ways, Japan feels like a gridlocked country. And people (especially young) already know it but can't do anything about it. I'll point out that the heart of the problem is its lifetime employment system, which the entire economy and social system of Japan is optimized for and depending upon. So you wanna change schools? You have to change the system and reposition many teachers, but nope, it's not allowed. Teachers are well protected by the Japanese labor law and they can't do any other job (and from what I saw they're particularly inflexible work force). You want more diverse students? Good luck with finding a good career path for them, because under the lifetime employment system you can get good choices only when you're young, and you have to stay in the same company for the rest of your life. Again, many people assume that way and many financial systems in Japan are built upon this assumption. And finally, you want many more competitive researchers? Nooo, because there are too many mediocre researchers that have tenure already. You can't compete with them. Again, blame the lifetime employment system. I, too, honestly don't know what's a good exit path from this. Personally I think having more immigrants is a way to go, but then there's this right-wing people and Trumpism going rampage right now. Sigh.

michaelbuddy 10y ago
Adding more immigrants is a good way to destabilize the country. Just be the change you want to see. Man up, and create. Building things rather than destabilizing or disrupting other people is always the best thing for everyone. Just saying "oh all of you need to change, so let's bring in immigrants to force you" is a really strange mindset. It sounds quite unpatriotic to me.
fl0wenol 10y ago
I think the way you fix a situation like this is to create new, informal institutions. Young people have to feel empowered and have pride in building small communities, and by extension, small businesses. There will always be pressure from others to stop screwing around in the dirt, but you have to preserve and have the desire to want to be living with uncertainty. Over decades I think you can chip away at the fossilized foundations of old institutions (big government, big business, the schools that feed into it and the cultural lockdown they have on young people)