Japanese Universities’ Community in International Environment: Maneuvers or Heading Down?

The article discusses the issues that striving for getting on the first lines of ratings, Japanese universities have faced to face with in recent years. Since 2003, when universities began to receive their public evaluation on the pages of global university ratings, the world university system has entered a new phase of its development. For many countries, including Japan, getting into the top-list of global ratings has become almost a national goal. Of the new issues that have emerged over the course of the past years, the most important at present is the “internationalization” of Japanese universities and the most obvious manifestations of this tendency are the increasing interest in world university rankings. At the same time in Japan internationalization has become both a universities and a government priority because it is seen as a sign of global competitiveness. Since 2000, the government has introduced a series of legislative and policy initiatives aimed at increasing institutional autonomy and management capabilities, enhancing evaluation and emphasizing quality, and developing internationally-competitive research via centres of excellence and graduate schools. To solve this problem the Japanese government decided to increase the number of international students from the current 100,000 to 300,000 by 2020. However now the ranking of Japanese universities is on a downward trajectory, as universities elsewhere in East Asia catch up. In order to become more competitive with universities in other countries, Japan needs to open up its universities and work positively to welcome more-and more talented-researchers and students from overseas, it also needs to increase the number of courses available in English. At the same time it needs to send more Japanese researchers and students overseas to stimulate their research and improve necessary for top-ranking standards.