Japanese universities have depicted a worrying trend as they are lagging behind their global counterparts. Jeff Kingston, Director of Asian studies at Temple University Japan opined that Japanese scholars have not been motivated to lay substantial emphasis on using the English language in research.
Could the use of the English language by Japanese scholars be the key to restore the lost glory of Japanese universities?
According to a recent report released by the Times Higher Education (THE) World International University Rankings, only two Japanese universities made it to the world’s top two hundred (200).
This was a significant drop from the 2013 rankings where five (5) of them were included in the list.
Japanese universities hindered by low internationalization
Various education experts have aired their concerns about the way Japanese universities have shown laxity on the issue of globalization.
For instance, most of them are not innovative in the English language, and this significantly deters their international penetration.
Additionally, low university funding has been a significant challenge, and this has hindered various prospects.
THE’s international rankings are founded on five factors, namely learning environment or teaching, international outlook, research, citations, and industry income. Here is an affirmation to what we premised at the start – Japanese universities have isolated themselves by their disuse of the English language, the primary language of global business.
The citation component entails the calculation of the average number of times a specific university published work cited by global academics. Notably, it contributes to a reasonable 30% of the overall ranking.
The citation factor has considerably thrashed Japanese universities, as many research papers are published in Japanese. The notion depicted is that the lack of English-language innovation in these institutions of higher education has been detrimental in their low international ranking.
Scholars at Japanese universities not motivated
According to the director of Asian studies at Temple University Japan, Jeff Kingston, Japanese scholars have not been motivated to lay substantial emphasis on using the English language in research.
Additionally, research was an issue that was not highly prioritized in Japanese universities because it started being regarded in the late 1990s.
Nevertheless, the Japanese administration, through its Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, has been making various education reforms. For instance, a 7.7 billion yen or US$982 million fund was created for local universities.
Moreover, on September 20, ninety-seven 97 % of Japan’s junior colleges and universities were permitted by the nation’s education ministry to avail free education programs for students from low-income households.
