Divs-poole

REFORM OF JAPANESE HIGHER EDUCATION 

February and March (though the school offices themselves are not closed, and 

faculty and staff are quite busy with entrance exams during this time). Though 

many universities have changed to a semester-based school calendar, university 

classes in Japan still often meet once a week for the entire school year. At EUC, 

though there is a first and second “semester,” the classes themselves continue after 

the summer break, meeting about 25 times over the year, once a week for 90 

minutes. The  first and second “semesters” are semesters or terms only in an 

administrative sense. Professors do administer midyear tests, but much of the final 

grade for large lecture classes is dependent on the yearend tests given in January. 

With pressure to liberalize the university curriculum in an effort to allow for 

students to both transfer to other institutions midway through a course and also 

cross-register for classes among the numerous university consortia that have been 

cropping up in different regions, a “modular” syllabus, modeled on American 

colleges, is being introduced at many campuses around Japan, a trend that has hit 

most British universities as well (besides Oxford and Cambridge).  

In 1999, EUC joined a consortium of universities in western Tokyo (Shutoken 

nishibu daigaku, “West Tokyo Universities”) that have agreed to allow an 

exchange of modular credits for coursework, and which increased the pressure to 

institute a semester system. There are numerous problems with such a drastic 

change to the university calendar, however. Of course in order for a course with the 

same credit weight to be offered on a semester calendar, 90 minutes of class time 

per week must be effectively doubled, so the class must meet two or three times a 

week rather than once a week. This was discussed at EUC, but only briefly.  

 The university employs over 100 part-time lecturers. While many of these hold 

permanent positions at other universities,  a fair number make a living on part-time 

work alone. In actuality, part-time lecturing is quite stable,  since hiring and firing 

is done with great reluctance—though the academic affairs committee began to 

administer questionnaires to students in 2001, there are no objective standards 

upon which to assess either part-time or full-time faculty members (no tenure 

process either), and so it is nearly impossible to fire a professor. Though the 

process to hire a permanent faculty member can be quite convoluted,  among 

overworked full-time faculty members, the general perception regarding part-time 

faculty hiring is that there need not be the same serious attention paid to the time-

intensive job of advertising, short-listing, and interviewing candidates.  

The existence of this semipermanent cadre of part-time workers, then, becomes 

a major issue when implementing a new school calendar. For example, in 2002, 

because of the number of national holidays that fall on a Monday (the “Happy 

Monday” syndrome, as it is called at many campuses in Japan), the university 

decided to compensate by adding extra “Monday” classes on different days of the 

week. Of course the part-time professors simply cancelled their EUC classes on 

these extra days, since they already had other commitments at different 

universities. Likewise, if required to teach two or three times a week in a semester 

system, it was feared that many part-timers might quit and find work elsewhere in 

Tokyo at universities that have not yet changed to a semester system. Full-time 

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CHAPTER 2 

professors as well would not welcome the introduction of a four- or five-day 

teaching schedule, since this would eliminate their income from part-time teaching 

at other universities, not a small amount of money in some cases. Though very 

much the exception, one full-time language professor juggles a schedule that 

includes more than 10 part-time classes a week in addition to his full-time teaching 

and administrative responsibilities at EUC, an additional ¥200,000–300,000 a 

month. 

At one of the largest universities in Japan, the administrative offices wield 

considerable power and so were able to ignore opposition and implement a faculty-

wide semester system, a change that ended up being short-lived since neither the 

students nor the faculty and administrative offices themselves could handle the 

new calendar. The university quickly reverted back to year-long classes. At EUC, 

the president insisted that such a decision be made with the consent, and 

consensus, of the faculty senate. For this reason, after five years of deliberations, a 

compromise was reached whereby the university adopted a “quasi-semester 

system” from 2005. Courses were still a year long, but split into two parts. 

Students registered for classes only once a year, as they did before. They received 

half of the credit hours for the course after the first semester, and the remaining 

credits after successful completion of the second semester.  

Practically, the academic affairs committee hopes that this would help with 

keeping students enrolled. If a student fails “half a course,” he/she need only to 

register and pass the remaining “half” in order to gain a year of credit hours. 

Though certainly a reality at some struggling institutions, EUC does not overtly 

cajole professors to pass students undeservedly, inflating grades so as to better 

retain and graduate students in a timely fashion. In fact, the university 

administration and president supported Professor Wakai, a lecturer in economic 

history, in his decision to refuse to pass a student in one of his classes. The 

ideology of “family-like education” (kazoku kyōiku) also supports the adoption of a 

semester or quasi-semester system. In the new calendar, professors must set exams 

and papers, assess students, and assign grades after each semester. Professors have 

more classroom administration, and in a sense, more teaching to do than before the 

implementation of the semester system. Students, and professors, have less time to 

“relax,” since the semester system is inherently busy; the syllabus is set at a faster 

pace and time on task necessarily increased to accommodate both lectures and 

preparation for exams and papers. This forces students to participate more in the 

academic process, if nothing else than by involving them in more hours of 

classroom education.  

Many large lecture courses are plagued by the phenomenon of students chatting 

in class (Shimada 2002; Uta 2005). In an effort to curtail the practice, professors 

will often not require attendance in hopes that their class will then be attended only 

by the most motivated students. Rates of attendance, therefore, vary between 

classes considerably. One professor estimated that 10 percent of the student body 

rarely show their face on campus, sitting the year-end exams alone to try to gain 

the credit hours needed for graduation. The Academic Affairs Committee and 

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