Divs-poole

REFORM OF JAPANESE HIGHER EDUCATION 

traditionally each professor at the majority of the private and public colleges and 

universities throughout Japan has had nearly total autonomy in teaching and 2) that 

tracking has taken place historically only during the entrance examination 

process—once at a particular university all students are effectively lumped into the 

same classes regardless of ability or interest. In Japan egalitarianism is a strong 

social more in educational circles.  

The impetus for these reforms was multifaceted. The introduction of a new 

faculty, a school of management, necessitated a schoolwide reform of the 

curriculum. The process was decentralized, since all the departments were asked 

by the committee for academic affairs to rethink and adjust their individual 

curricula. This included the FLG. In addition, there was dissatisfaction with the 

school curriculum in general. In particular, the foreign language program was 

exposed as failing in its mission. Partly this was because of the sheer size and 

visibility of ELT at EUC, by far the largest department in terms of number of 

classes on offer and number of professors employed. This visibility was boosted by 

the presence of foreign, “native English” professors on campus. In terms of the 

FLG, the third facet of this drive for changing the curriculum was the willingness 

among the full-time professors to look for creative solutions, though this 

willingness also involved self-serving reasons. Before the 2001 school year, neither 

the ELT nor the first-year seminar curriculum and class syllabi were decided 

institutionally; individual professors, not academic affairs committees or subject 

departments, were given total responsibility for both the planning and content of 

these classes. However, such a laissez-faire approach changed, since the 

department (in the case of the EFL classes) and the academic affairs committee (in 

the case of the first-year seminar) decided to take control and revamp the 

curriculum for these two freshman courses. 

A change in the language curriculum was the first attempt to adjust for a 

perceived decline in student ability. Palfreyman (2001) discusses this phenomenon 

in the context of HE in Britain, disparagingly labeling it as “dumbing down,” while 

Kariya (2002, 2003) argues that the decline in academic ability in Japan is not only 

exaggerated but the concern is misplaced. The result was that coursework and 

assessment more “appropriate” to the learners’ ability and needs was offered. In the 

English foreign language curriculum, the two required EFL classes had been taught 

by non-Japanese instructors (“natives”), while the few elective classes were taught 

by Japanese professors. These EFL classes were taught primarily by part-time 

faculty. Although in the new curriculum most classes were still being taught by 

part-timers, the ratio was changed. The FLG decided that incoming freshmen could 

not handle the required first-year EC classes taught exclusively by native speakers. 

The curriculum was therefore changed so that Japanese English professors would 

be responsible for all first-year students, and the foreign staff would teach only 

second-year or above. Significantly, in terms of their self-importance, full-time 

Japanese English professors teach compulsory classes that are core (compulsory) 

not merely peripheral (electives) to the ELT and EUC curriculum.  

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CHAPTER 2 

Full-time Japanese professors are also intensively involved in the curriculum 

(tracking the incoming freshman class into different levels) and the syllabuses 

(designing the wide range of elective classes now on offer). To adjust to the 

increasing need for EUC students to possess more and more “qualifications” and 

“certificates” to list on their resumes when job-hunting, the first-year ELT syllabus 

was adjusted to help students attain a better score on the Test of English for 

International Communication (TOEIC) exam. Furthermore, using a standardized 

testing instrument, incoming students were streamed according to ability, a change 

that affected the classroom culture of the various student level groups. From the 

Japanese professors’ perspective, these reforms resulted in substantially more work 

than they were accustomed to; most teach seven credit hours (koma) as well as 

spend considerable time in curriculum planning and program development. As a 

result, a few dedicated part-time lecturers were enlisted to help ease the workload 

of the full-time professors, chafing under what they perceived as a new, busy 

schedule. 

The first-year seminar, since it is a homeroom class, was always taught 

exclusively by full-time faculty members. However, in the past, before the reforms, 

there had never been a common syllabus or even a common objective for this 

course. Professors had total freedom in doing as much, or as little, in the way of 

teaching, counseling, lecturing, and leading student research projects. There was no 

direction for new professors. Even as a new foreign professor I was given no 

official guidance. An entirely new first-year seminar was implemented at the 

beginning of the 2002 school year, however. Not only was there a common 

syllabus, but all students were assigned the same textbook as well (Sumiya 1981). 

There was a clear objective and both the first-year seminar program as well as the 

individual professors were given full support of the academic affairs committee 

and administrative staff.  

In addition, as part of the new first-year seminar curriculum, the institution 

decided (at the considerable expense of several million yen) that all first-year 

students and first-year seminar faculty would participate in a two-day freshman 

orientation in the Izu Peninsula, a famous resort area in Shizuoka Prefecture, west 

of Tokyo. This was well planned in advance, of course, and executed smoothly in a 

regimented fashion typical of such institutional outings in Japan. The feeling was 

that incoming students needed more practice in basic study and research skills, 

and, to help them adjust to the academic demands and freedoms of a university, the 

first-year seminar was redesigned as a sort of remedial class, with practice in 

reading, writing, summarizing, discussion, presentation, and even etiquette, all part 

of the syllabus, where before professors were allowed to lecture on anything they 

wanted (or not, as a very few were accused of). 

Implementing a Semester System 

The Japanese school year begins in April and ends the following March, and at 

universities, classes usually end in January, with a long spring break during 

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