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Return to Bulletin Home - October 2008 |
Japan's Plan to Boost Enrolment The Japanese government has announced a sweeping plan to increase the number of international students studying in the country. The government's plan is designed to attract 300,000 international students to Japan within the next 12 years—nearly tripling the current enrolment of 119,000 students.
To meet its ambitious target, Japan intends to streamline its immigration procedures for foreign students, increase the number of English-speaking faculty members at 30 key universities, strengthen Japanese-language instruction, expand promotions through Japanese embassies, and make it easier for foreign students to find jobs in Japan following graduation. These broadly based strategies appear to arise in part from dramatic demographic shifts in Japan. The Japanese population is aging even as birth rates decline, and this is expected to lead not only to declining university enrolments of Japanese students, but even more significantly to acute labour shortages in the years to come. Government forecasts indicate that a shrinking labour force in Japan could prompt a slowdown in economic growth by the 2020s. |
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