Yoshiyuki IIMURA
The decline in the number of academic positions is a shared problem both inside and outside Japan. Finding one’s first position is particularly difficult, and most young researchers in Japan must begin their careers at small universities in rural areas. For most early-career scholars in Japan, being assigned to a provincial university is not a matter of choice but a structural inevitability. I was fortunate enough to secure my first academic post even before completing my Ph.D. It was a research fellowship at the large, well-established university where I graduated, but since the position was fixed-term, I soon had to find another one. The next opportunity I found was a lectureship at a small private university in a provincial city. Such universities typically have fewer than 2,000 students, and the one where I worked currently has fewer than 800—a number that is likely to decline further because of Japan’s declining birthrate.
When I first visited the university for an interview, I immediately sensed how different it was from my alma mater, where the south wind carried faint scent of Tokyo. Accepting it as an inevitable stage in the early part of my academic career, I found myself recalling Sōseki’s Botchan—or it reminded me somewhat of Carlo Levi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli. For an early-career researcher, being assigned to this place felt like a kind of “exile.” Still, at least, rather than despising that region, I came to appreciate many of the people there.
This university is not what one would call a “good university.” In Japan, the university enrollment rate exceeds 60%, yet a considerable portion of those who go on to higher education do not meet what would internationally be considered a middle school–level academic standard. While students with relatively strong academic performance tend to leave for universities in major metropolitan areas, those with lower levels tend to remain in regional cities. Raising their academic ability to a level that makes them employable in the local labor market has effectively become the mission of Japan’s private universities in the provinces. In order to survive amid a sharp demographic decline, these universities have had little choice but to take on this role.
In Japan, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) provides operating subsidies to private universities. If a university fails to fill its enrollment quota, surprisingly, these subsidies may be cut. This funding mechanism reflects the influence of the “selection and concentration” model introduced under Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s administration in the early 2000s. The model sought to introduce market competition into education and research by concentrating public funding on institutions deemed excellent, while withdrawing resources from those considered unproductive. Although this approach was intended to enhance efficiency, many observers have argued that it has instead contributed to Japan’s steady decline in research output over the past decade. Nevertheless, MEXT has remained unable—or unwilling—to abandon this neoliberal model. Universities are also required to submit an “Improvement Plan” detailing reforms in admissions, curriculum, and public relations—clearly a typical “bullshit job.”
For small private universities in provincial areas, which rely heavily on these subsidies, maintaining full enrollment often takes priority over educational quality. Accepting large numbers of international students has become a common strategy. Universities receive additional subsidies for each international student, allowing them to secure both enrollment targets and financial gain simultaneously. However, many of these students arrive with limited Japanese language proficiency or academic preparation.
At the university where I worked, most international students are recruited from developing countries through “visa-brokers.” For many of them, the main appeal of studying in Japan is that they can work on a student visa—Japanese student visas permit up to 28 hours of work per week—and remit money to their families back home. Yet most of them are not able to keep up with university coursework while working part-time.
Foreign readers might assume that academically struggling students should simply be dismissed. However, once again, surprisingly, high dropout rates can also reduce government subsidies, so the university would never expel them. Nowadays, students have effectively become “customers” that universities cannot afford to lose. In fact, I personally experienced implicit pressure from the administration on grading decisions when it appeared that many students in one of my classes might fail.
As a result, Japanese provincial private universities differ greatly from what most people abroad imagine when they hear the word “university.” The institutions that foreign audiences usually think of are, in essence, the small handful of Japanese universities that are plausible destinations for international students—the top few percent. In my case, I often had to start my classes with content at the level of high school, or even secondary school, and conduct my research outside of regular working hours.
Since universities have come to function as something like remedial high schools, parents have begun to expect university faculty to play the role of high school teachers. One reason for this is that many parents of current students never attended university themselves, and therefore have little understanding of what a typical university environment is like. Unfortunately, in Japan, what is expected of high school teachers extends beyond teaching; they are also expected to provide personal care. This includes understanding and dealing with students’ emotional, physical, financial, and family problems. Such expectations foster an unhealthy closeness between teachers and students. This kind of closeness, which erodes professional distance, is much like what one can observe in Japanese popular culture—although Japanese pop culture rarely reflects social reality accurately, unfortunately, this particular depiction happens to be partly true.
As universities have tried to accommodate parents’ expectations, they have come to implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, demand that faculty engage in similar duties, recognizing that the real customer is not the students, but their parents—because “the customer is always right.” In this way, the intimacy characteristic of high schools has been transferred into the university setting. It was this very structure that drove me into crisis. In such crises, universities would never be on the side of employees, again because “the customer is always right.”