Higher education is very important to build the people in any country

My perspective:

1) Curriculum crowding in many contexts needs to be addressed and faculty expectations for students' independent study should increase;

2) In many contexts, faculty publications within intra-departmental journals are perceived as being comparable to publications within respected peer-reviewed journals. In some cases, faculty aim to primarily publish in intra-departmental journals. This is a problem.

What do you think?

Are these problems specific to Japan or are these problems present in other Pacific-Asian universities?

Several cultural considerations need to be taken into consideration here. A lot of it comes down to hierarchy.

For one, curriculum crowding is seen as a form of oversight to make sure that students are exposed to what has classically been thought of as the "liberal arts." As the overarching belief by professors and administrators appears to be that students will not willingly approach academic study unless it is required. Thus, to ensure that students have a broad education, it becomes necessary to have students taking large numbers of individual courses. Taking 25 hours of course work each week is in some sense intended to take the place of independent study, and prevent students from learning "incorrect" information were they to learn on their own.

The basic perspective here is that universities are primarily meant to teach "citizenship" or "humanity" rather than prepare students for a profession, which is seen by university faculties (often snobbishly) as the role of lower tertiary education institutions.

With regard to the intra-departmental journals, many faculty members consider this to be their primary publishing responsibility. The idea is that this serves the local community needs, rather than a faceless international academic society. Intra-departmental journal articles are quite often written as reading material for teachers' classes, and so are believed to contribute to students' education, whether or not they contain useful information.

These are just some of the practices and beliefs that perpetuate the problems endemic to Japanese higher ed.

Dear all

to ensure that students have a broad education, it becomes necessary to have students taking large numbers of individual courses

Mr. Fryer,

Before to perform any changes (improvements) in the Japanese Higher Educational System, you should clarify, which exactly Universities you visualiized in ' North America, Western Europe and Australia'. Because of, realy, in these georgaphic regions are among the top Universities wourld-wide. Starting with the west-European ones however, which generally provide among the most competitive Edication world-wide. But in parallel you may find Universities which ranks are far, far-less then those of many Japanese Universities.

Your statement need first very comprehensive analysis of the akreditation criteria and ranking of the Japanese Universities, Countries in North Amerika, Selected countries from west-Europa, and Australia. Than you shall surprise from the plase of the Japan Higher Educational System in the world-map.

Your use obviouse only populistic-sources of the rank-list of the world Universities.

For those interested in this question, here are two RECENT, excellent, open-access articles by perhaps the two finest writers in the field of Japanese higher education.

1. http://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a02801/

2. http://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a00602/

After you have read them, please feel free to comment here... The more dialogue on this topic the better!

www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a02801/

www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a00602/