Divs-poole

JAPANESE TERTIARY EDUCATION 

about which university entrance examinations they should take based on the 

probability of their acceptance (a high school teacher’s reputation is on the line if 

their students shoot too high and miss their mark—conservatism is a necessity). In 

fact, the largest cram school syndicates in the Tokyo and Osaka area publish 

hensachi  ranking lists of two- and four-year colleges and universities, which 

students and teachers use to make application decisions.  

Japanese society is faced with two demographic challenges that have affected, 

among other social systems, the university and entrance exam systems. These 

phenomena have been termed low birthrate syndrome (shōshika) and aging 

syndrome (kōreika). These, of course, have repercussions throughout society, and 

schools are witnessing the effects. Most universities in Japan have seen, first, a 

slowing in the rate of applicants, and, then, an overall decrease in the number of 

students sitting the yearly examinations. This has forced a normally conservative 

sector of society to move in relatively innovative ways in an attempt to counteract 

the growing inability to attract students.  

Even top-name schools in the higher echelons of the rankings have had to 

consider the ramifications of increasingly fewer applicants each year. Not the least 

of their concerns are financial, of course, since entrance examination fees are a 

substantial source of revenue, even for the prestigious, but inexpensive, national 

universities (roughly ¥20,000 per student). No school in Japan can afford to sit on 

the laurels of past achievement and national prestige, least of all the universities 

occupying the lower rankings. University prep and cram schools have instituted an 

“F” rank, designating those universities where the entrance examination is a mere 

formality, since nearly any student that applies and sits the exams and interviews is 

automatically accepted. Such universities have a tacit open admissions  (zen’nyū) 

policy, and the post-2007 period, the year when nationally the number of 18-year-

olds equaled the number of university enrolment places, has been labeled the “era 

of open admissions [to universities]” (zen’nyū jidai). 

SOSHIKI: ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE 

Although much has been made of the decentralized and autonomous system of 

professorship chairs (kōza) that organizes departments and university life at the 

former imperial university, there is a huge diversity of institutional structure among 

HEIs in Japan. Some generalizations about daigaku organizational structure can be 

made by examining a specific institution, such as EUC (see Appendix for the 

“official” organizational map of EUC). 

Other participant observers have characterized both American academics and 

the organizational structure of academe as generally competitive, self-

aggrandizing, hierarchical, and highly conscious of an administrator vs. faculty 

divide within the HEI (Lutz 1986; Wisniewski 2000). In what ways does or does 

not the ethnographic data for Japan, and for EUC specifically, bear out these same 

generalizations made of American HE? 

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CHAPTER 1 

In describing the organizational hierarchy of kyōju at EUC, one of the first 

observations to be made is the sharp distinction that emphasizes the full-time and 

part-time (hijōkin) faculty, as mentioned above. Although hijōkin is usually glossed 

as “part-time,” more accurate is the direct translation, “non-full-time.” Much has 

been written about how “part-time” is a misnomer, since many professors who do 

not have a full-time position are teaching as many, if not more, hours than the 

“full-time” staff, but for less pay and no benefits—a second-class or under-class 

professoriate (Pratt 1997). At EUC and many other universities in Japan as well, 

this is largely the case.  

Hijōkin  faculty often teach as many, and sometimes even more, classes than 

full-time faculty, if demand for professors in their subject is high (e.g., language, 

computer science, accounting, etc.). They are usually paid in the order of ¥300,000 

to ¥400,000 per year-long course (roughly 26 weeks of one 90-minute class per 

week). The most ambitious hijōkin professors, usually busy language teachers in a 

large metropolis, have part-time work at three, four, or five different universities 

and are able to make as much as ¥7 million a year by teaching intensively for the 

roughly six-month university calendar of classes. When one considers that the cost 

of living in Tokyo or Osaka is probably less than London, and the fact that a 

hijōkin university lecturer can potentially take five or even six months of holiday 

with no pressure of research papers to write or committee meetings to attend, it is 

no wonder that quite a few hijōkin are content being “non-full-time.”  

On the other hand, it is a precarious existence with no guarantee of classes from 

year to year, no pay raises or bonuses, no office space or money for research, and 

no health or retirement benefits. To make a living teaching part-time, a professor 

has to be able to build a full and intense schedule of university work, literally in the 

classroom teaching at least eight hours a day, five or even six days a week for those 

six months of classes. This could take years of networking to achieve, and because 

of the demand for “native” university English professors and the ample supply of 

Japanese English professors, this aim is more realistically achieved by a foreign 

instructor than a Japanese instructor. Also, foreigners sometimes receive a higher 

per class wage than Japanese teaching the same class, a practice that can probably 

be traced back to the Meiji era system of hiring “foreign employees” (oyatoi 

gaikokujin) to train the emerging Japanese elite. 

For Japanese professors, this is compounded by the fact that without a “real” 

full-time position, socially one has an “unaffiliated” status in Japan, less of a 

problem for foreigners who are already outside the system (indeed, the word for 

foreigner in Japanese literally means “outside person”). For this reason, many are 

content with their part-time existence out of necessity—they see no hope for 

securing a full-time position because of the scarcity and competition. There is little 

time for research or further credentialization.  

At a liberal arts department meeting in September 2002, Baba-sensei, who sits 

on the board of trustees and is one of the most vocal of the senior faculty members, 

implied that the new curriculum being proposed for implementation in 2004 and 

2005 would be partly designed to minimize the number of part-time faculty being 

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