With student mobility and global partnerships at the heart of this year’s EAIE conference we met with Miki Horie, Director of the Division of International Affairs at Ritsumeikan University to talk about leading the way on internationalisation in Japan.
The PIE: What do you do as the Director of Division of International Affairs?
MH: We have a unique system at Ritsumeikan university. We have close to 100 people working in the international division of the office and I am responsible for developing new programmes. Now we are working on the revision of the Global Gateway programme, which involves Japanese students studying abroad. Many Japanese usually go overseas to study finance and they don’t focus on English proficiency. So I give them intensive English proficiency training so that they can go overseas. It’s been five years since the Global Gateway programme started so I want to integrate that programme into the mainstream curriculum. Integration is the main challenge now.
The PIE: How has international education changed in Japan since you started?
MH: I have been in this field for 10 years and I think we have more support from the Japanese government now than we have had before. In Japan, internationalisation has been so marginalized. Now we are closer to being a part of mainstream education and managers at the top are interested in internationalisation, because they hear of its importance from industry and government. So that is a good thing.
“We have more support from the Japanese government now than we have had before”
The PIE: Can you give us a brief overview of Japan’s current international education policies?
MH: Our international policy started with 100,000 students and we were targeting the whole world. But, our national scholarship only covered 10% of the national student body and within this 10% there was a lot of diversity. But, the rest of the fee-paying students were all from China and Korea, so we already had a lot of contact with these two countries. But, we never sent our own students to these countries because the relationship was not politically equal. The China, Korea and Japan focus is new and it is brave for the government to start this up, because these are politically unstable regions. We are branching out into India too where there is a lot of demand, since there are so many Japanese language learners in India. The demand for higher education is not met by the supply there. So this is a great chance for us.
The PIE: CAMPUS Asia is a new scheme building relationships with China, Korea and Japan. What are the outcomes the government is hoping to achieve in strengthening ties with other East Asian countries?
“Korean, Chinese and Japanese governments believe that if they can build personal relationships among young people, we can then encourage deeper conversations between the three countries”
MH: Politically they want more conversation between the three countries (China, Korea, Japan). We have so much information through the mass media that portray Chinese people hating Japanese people or vice versa and there is much coverage over disputes over the small islands. But, that is only a part of the political conflict. All three governments believe that if they can build personal relationships among young people, we can then encourage deeper conversations between the three countries.
The PIE: What has been the response to the efforts being made to build ties between these three countries?
MH: When I talk to the older generations, say 40 or 50 years old, they say programmes like CAMPUS Asia although fascinating won’t attract many students. But, when I talk to the young people they are quite fascinated with this programme. I also talked with some senior students and some of them wished programmes like CAMPUS Asia were around when they first started.
The PIE: Is Japan planning to engage markets outside of Asia?[more>]
MH: The majority of our American students come for an exchange programme. They are not really seeking degree programmes. The government is interested in mobility of students outside of Asia and we do have another initiative called Japan US programme, but that’s with our sister school.
The PIE: As a university, what strategies are you using to further internationalise your students?
MH: We have several different target numbers that we set up in 2008 and the target year is 2020. In 2008
“We thought we should have a good balance of incoming and outgoing students so that we can internationalise our own students as well”
we had 1,200 incoming students but our target number is 4,005 including short term and degree seeking students. As far as outbound student numbers go, currently we send 1,800 out but our target number is 2,400. Actually these numbers were decided under a scheme known as Global 30.
Initially, the government wanted to only increase the number of incoming students, but as an institution we thought in order to increase the quality of the services, we should have a good balance of incoming and outgoing students so that we can internationalise our own students as well. So, we thought both were important. We are also trying to increase the number of courses that give Japanese students the opportunity to mix with international students.
The PIE: What is the Global 30 scheme?
MH: The government wants to increase the number of students to 300,000 by 2020 so they chose 30 core universities to lead the internationalisation of education. Currently, it’s just 13 universities who are involved in the scheme because the budget for it had to be cut. It will come to a close this year. Our
“We have to look outside of Europe or America to places where Japanese students have never been before, like Latin America or Africa for example and send them there”
primary mission is to increase the number of students. Second, as one of the G30 universities we need to share what we learnt from the scheme with non G30 universities. But, one of the problems is that most of the G30 universities are big institutions with larger human and budget resources and those not included in the scheme are smaller, so it will be a challenge to find out how we can disseminate all the knowledge.
The PIE: Why is Japan focusing on internationalisation now?
MH: The main reason is that the Japanese population is shrinking. Our young generation is inward looking. They want to stay in Japan, which means we haven’t prepared them to be globally competitive. The government has suddenly realized this and they are pressuring us to educate those who are ready to be more global and it is a good thing for us international educators. We have to look outside of Europe or America to places where Japanese students have never been before, like Latin America or Africa for example and send them there.
