Collaboration and Competition Among Universities | Motohiro Tsuchiya, Vice-President / Professor, Graduate School of Media and Governance
2022.07.26
At the dinner venue hosted by Nanyang Technological University, a taiko drum performance by five students concludes, and dozens of guests take their seats at about ten round tables. It is the dinner for the Annual Presidents' Meeting of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU). We listen attentively to a presentation by a professor from Nanyang Technological University on the impact of climate change.
The Singaporean government requires masks to be worn indoors, but we hesitantly remove them as the dinner begins. The nine people around the table introduce themselves one by one. To my left is a mathematician from Nanyang Technological University, and to my right is a vice-president from a Southeast Asian university.
The vice-president asks, "Do our universities have an agreement?" "One moment," I say, checking the Keio University website. "Ah, yes, we do. We have a comprehensive agreement." Her university is the top one in her country. I enjoy the rest of my meal with peace of mind.
After the meal, I checked with Administrative Director Eiko Sumita, who knows everything about Keio's international collaborations. She told me that the MOU was not actually functioning well. Looking at the MOU, which was supposed to have been signed in the late 1980s, I saw that Keio's President Tadao Ishikawa had signed it, but the signature of the other university's president was illegible. There were traces of something written, but it was not a proper signature. After returning to Japan, we exchanged emails and decided to re-sign the MOU.
Keio University has about 350 agreements with foreign universities. These vary in intensity; some involve close annual exchanges, while others are merely signed with no subsequent activity. Each year, a certain number of new agreements are signed, and a similar number expire.
The topic of aging societies came up at the APRU meeting. "Not only in developed countries but also in developing nations, life expectancy is increasing, and societal aging is already a problem. While the global population is still growing, universities around the world are competing for young people. Universities in East Asia, where aging is particularly pronounced, are desperate to attract international students, but Africa is the only region with a surplus of young people. However, young people in Africa lack the funds to study abroad."
In Japan, where the 18-year-old population is rapidly declining, the number of universities is still increasing, now exceeding 780. Simply put, this means we will have to accept more international students. The globalization of Japanese universities has been promoted under the leadership of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Keio University has also participated in these efforts through the Global 30 Project (Project for Establishing Core Universities for Internationalization) and the Top Global University Project.
Attending conferences like the APRU meeting reveals that it is not just Japan; countries everywhere are eager to accept international students, and the spread of COVID-19 has caused significant damage to university management. Ultimately, it feels as though countries are just circulating international students among themselves, but Japanese universities, with fewer students to send abroad, find their bargaining power weakened.
Top-tier universities in the West are skillfully navigating the game of academic capitalism, building up endowments and using surplus funds for scholarships to attract outstanding students. Tuition at these universities is several times higher than in Japan. It is either paid by wealthy parents, or students must take on loans, study hard, find a job, and then pay them back.
While Japanese universities focus on their undergraduate programs, top-tier Western universities emphasize their graduate schools. By attracting excellent students at the graduate level, they can mass-produce research papers and maintain high positions in world university rankings.
Before I became the Vice-President for International Collaboration, I couldn't get interested when I heard talk of university rankings in university-wide meetings. There are many reasons to believe that the various university rankings do not accurately reflect reality. However, Keio University can no longer afford to be content with its status as a leading private university in Japan.
An official from a foreign university came to visit. They said they wanted to partner with Keio University, so I asked, "Why our university?" The answer was, "Because of your position in the university rankings." Regardless of how we see ourselves, this is how the world sees us.
The image of Keio University standing shoulder-to-shoulder with major Western universities is likely now a fantasy. The reality is that hundreds of universities rank above us. We must continue to attract Japan's best students while also drawing in top students from the global market.
I presented a framework for globalization at a meeting of the Keio University Board of Councillors. I received a comment: "It's pathetic to be happy about ranking in the top 100 in a few fields. I expect us to be in the top 30 in the overall rankings." To achieve this, various reforms are necessary: ensuring faculty and student diversity, offering courses in English and other foreign languages, promoting international research, increasing the number of graduate students, securing surplus funds, achieving efficient university management, and so on. Universities around the world are beginning to move forward rapidly in the post-COVID era.