JAPAN: English courses to boost recruitment

Japan is boosting its recruitment of foreign students by increasing the number of university courses taught in English. Foreign enrolments are now estimated to exceed 133,000 - up by more than 9,000 since 2008 following an ambitious plan unveiled by the government for universities to recruit 300,000 international students by 2020.

The Global 30 Project for Establishing Core Universities for Internationalisation was initiated to achieve the expansion goal using a range of measures including active recruitment of foreign students, offering more courses in English and setting up internationalisation centres.

Tokyo's Waseda University was among 13 universities identified by the project to spearhead the Global 30 initiative. The 13 receive 'prioritised financial assistance' of between US$2.2 million and $4.4 million annually for the next five years.

"With this aid, each university will strive to recruit 3,000 to 8,000 international students," the Japanese Education Ministry says.

Not surprisingly, students from China, Korea and Taiwan comprise the majority of foreign students, with those from Vietnam and Malaysia in fourth and fifth place. Waseda has the largest enrolment of international students and accepted its first foreigners in 1899 from China.

As part of its aim of becoming a 'global campus' and in accordance with the Global 30 goal, Waseda wants to increase the number of foreign students from 3,125 last year to 8,000 - comprising 4,000 undergraduates and 4,000 postgraduates. The university also intends to boost the ratio of foreign professors to local ones by 20% as soon as it can attract them.

That should not prove too difficult as Waseda has links with 500 universities in 70 countries. It has started a strong recruitment drive across Asia and is promoting the fact that it offers 34 courses - 13 undergraduate and 21 postgraduate - in English.

Whereas China has positioned itself among foreign students as the place to study Mandarin, Chinese literature and traditional Chinese medicine, Japan promotes itself as the country for biotechnology and automobile courses.