Japanese students prefer to stay home
GEOS, one of Japan’s largest English conversation schools, has gone bankrupt. But the implosion of one of Japan’s biggest language schools has much wider consequence for some: it is part of a trend that is seeing Japan hit reverse gear on the global stage.
The number of Japanese students studying abroad or learning a language at home is dropping. Some point to the Lehman shock as the reason: finances have been tight. But Tadashi Yokoyama, chairman of language exam-preparation company Agos, says to the Japan Times, “This is not a time in Japan for intellectual curiosity.”
Undergraduate enrollment of Japanese students in America, which hosts the majority of the world’s leading universities, has plummeted 52 percent since 2000. While Japan still is one of the top places of origin for international students in the US, the rate of decline is alarming. Japanese students enrolling in China are also down; there were 19,000 in 2005, but now only 15,000. Instead, Japanese students are flocking to domestic institutions.
This is not to say that Japanese universities aren’t good, says Robert Dujarric, who runs the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies at Temple University. They are simply less exposed to foreign colleagues and students, under-represented at global conferences, and hardly ever publish in global journals. Japan’s ideas, he says, stay within Japan.
It’s not only among the young though, as the general populace seems less committed to learning a language. According to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the number of students enrolled at foreign-language conversation schools has plunged from 826,858 in February 2006, to 335,604 this year. The complete collapse of the entire market is reflected in the drop of monthly sales for the industry, which fell from 17.2 billion yen to 5.7 billion yen over four years.
But there is a story that these numbers don’t tell. We live in a digital world, and Generation Y seems more keen on utilizing the internet than ever. In fact, people are able to learn languages for free, utilizing sources such as www.livemocha.com.
With Japanese companies facing international competition, though, Japan’s younger generation should beware of restricting themselves to Japan. Japanese companies are looking into the international talent pool to regain their edge.
Itochu Corporation, for example, has created an international talent development system. Speaking at an Economist conference in March, Mitsuru Claire Chino, Corporate Counsel for Itochu Corporation, spelled it out:“The core of our workforce is Japanese, male, and freshly graduated from University, and with that, we are trying to compete in the global market?”