Why are Japan’s universities lagging so far behind their international peers?
- Despite Prime Minister Abe’s plan to see 10 Japanese universities in the world’s top 100, rankings have steadily slipped since 2013
- Experts say the poor performance is the result of a lack of English-language innovation, university funding and internationalisation
Despite Abe’s education reforms, which included the creation of a 7.7 billion yen (US$982 million) fund for local universities, last month’s release of the Times Higher Education (THE) World International University Rankings 2020 had some damning news. Just two Japanese universities are currently in the world’s top 200, below the 2013 rankings, when there were five in that position.
All five of the education experts to which the South China Morning Post spoke agreed Japan’s low rankings result from a combined lack of English-language innovation, university funding and internationalisation.
THE’s World University Rankings grade schools on five factors: teaching, or the learning environment; research, in terms of volume, income and reputation; citations; international outlook, for staff, students and research; and industry income. Each category is weighted differently and added up to produce a final score out of 100.
The citations category, calculated by the average number of times a university’s published work is cited by international academics, makes up a substantial 30 per cent of the overall ranking.
In Japan, the vast majority of papers are still published in Japanese, which a minority of non-Japanese scholars can utilise, said Yasushi Matsunaga of Waseda University, a professor of research strategy who has written extensively on the source of the country’s low rankings. He conducts his research in Japanese, but has had 12 research papers translated and published in English in his own effort to bridge the gap.
