Efforts Aim to Boost Study Abroad Programs in the Land of the Rising Sun
In response to Japan’s drastic decrease in the number of students studying abroad, the Japanese Education Ministry is implementing a system to encourage the growth of study abroad programs. In April 2012, Education Ministry officials said that every year for five years it would provide a select 40 universities with between ¥120 to ¥260 million each to start study abroad programs. The schools will be selected based on the quality of their program plans.
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in 2004, 82,945 Japanese students studied abroad. In 2009, only 59,923 students went overseas.
Their reasons for not leaving Japan? According to Kenneth Alan Grossberg, Professor of Marketing and Strategy at Waseda University, one reason is that studying abroad, particularly in the US, is very expensive: two to four times the cost of studying in Japan.
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