The number of 18 year olds in Japan has almost halved over the past twenty years (from 2.05m to 1.2m), yet universities have continued to spring up at an average of 13 per year. Unsurprisingly, this has created difficulties in recruitment with 46% of private universities left with empty places and 40% operating in the red.
The solution to this problem is apparently not to stop building them, but to ganbare the hell out of it and think up snazzy new course names containing as many buzzwords as possible. Of 1,200 undergraduate degrees currently offered by Japanese universities about 60% are unique, with hundreds more being introduced each year, baffling students, career advisers and recruiters alike.
One student graduating from the Faculty of Social Innovation claimed that the unusual name of her degree was an advantage as job interviewers would provide her with an extra question by asking what exactly that means, though we’d suggest a Korean symbol tattooed across the face as a more cost-effective way of attaining the same result.
It’s probably only a matter of time before students begin enrolling on Innovation in Educational Categorisation degrees.
Comments
I am working in one of those universities. I agree on author’s perspective mostly but there are reason of strange names. More high school students have interest to those courses with newly invented name. Those universities are simply following such demands.
Disadvantage in job hunting is warned before. But unfortunately, in 10 years before, students and parents did not pay attention to such opinion. Or our warning was not enough.
But the trend is reversed already. In these few years, more students, who are enrolled to our university, have higher priority for their future careers. And courses, which have more meaningful name, are getting more students.
Job finding rate of our course improved 20% last year. I hope it will be back to almost 100%, which was common in faculty of engineering in Japanese university.