Job offers for graduating job seekers as of October 1 were down to 62.5%, which is almost level with the lowest marks of 60.2% and 61.3% from 2003 and 2004 respectively, which were the lowest marks of the last decade and a half. But the rate of decline from a year earlier (7.4%) is greater [...]
Education
Written By: guyjin on November 4, 2009
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The Center for World-Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University has released its latest ranking of the top Universities around the world. This annual ranking is a major competitor of the Times Higher Education ranking, which was published last month.
Written By: guyjin on October 26, 2009
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A recent Yomiuri survey showed that 7% fewer people were reading books compared with a year earlier. The survey asked respondents whether they had read a book in the past month, and 53% responded that they had not. This was almost as high as the mark of 54% in 2002.
Intuitively, it may be [...]
Written By: guyjin on October 19, 2009
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The latest issue of the annual UN Human Development Index (HDI) from the UN Development Program shows Japan in 10th place in the world. This places it 3 places above the US, but 8 spots below my home country of Australia (see the top 15 ranked countries below). The [...]
Written By: guyjin on October 12, 2009
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Staff writer for the Japan Times, Mariko Kato, posted an interview piece with new Education Minister Kawabata Tatsuo. The headline for the piece was ‘Education Chief Takes Liberal Path’, but I think Kato is a little confused about some of the differences between liberalism and conservatism. Few of the policies mentioned by [...]
Written By: guyjin on October 2, 2009
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Yesterday I wrote about Japan’s Temporary Worker Problem, and today I saw an interesting article by Lisa Gay at Japan Today (originally from Metropolis), which argues the case of teaching in Japan as the ‘McJob of Asia’. The article makes a few good points.
Starting with the overall premise [...]
Written By: guyjin on September 21, 2009
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According to a Japan Times editorial today, Japan is set to increase the number of foreign students studying in Japan to around 300,000 by 2020. This represents a 250% increase over current levels (there are currently about 120,000).
The plan, hatched by a 6 ministry taskforce including the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and [...]
