foreign students in Japan constitute 

 approximately 7 percent of enroll- 

 ment. In 1984, Monbusho an- 

 nounced a plan to increase the 

 number of foreign students tenfold 

 by the year 2000. If this occurs, for- 

 eign students will constitute ap- 

 proximately 5 percent of all students 

 in Japanese higher education, and 

 possibly one-quarter of all graduate 

 students. Currently, foreign stu- 

 dents of Western origin in Japan are 

 most likely to specialize in the hu- 

 manities and social sciences, while 

 those from Asia and the Third World 

 are most likely to specialize in the 

 sciences and engineering.-'^ 



^'Factors influencing foreign student enrollments 

 in Japan are discussed in Joseph Hicks, "The Situ- 

 ation of Asian Foreign Students in Japan — Can Jap- 

 anese Universities Handle a 10-Fold Increase?", 

 Higher Education Expniisioti in Afia (Hiroshima, Ja- 

 pan, Research Institute for Higher Education, Hi- 

 roshima University, 1985), pp. 141-150. 



postgraduate 

 education 



Postgraduate education is not as 

 strongly emphasized in Japan as in 

 the United States and most of Eu- 

 rope; however, statistics may not 

 fully reflect the number of Japanese 

 receiving some form of postgrad- 

 uate education. Many of Japan's sci- 

 entists and engineers leave the 

 university for industrial or other em- 

 ployment immediately upon com- 

 pletion of their first degree. While 

 pursuing a career at a new location, 

 they usually maintain contact with 

 their former professor. If they com- 

 plete a research project that meets 

 with the professor's approval, they 

 may submit a report as a basis for 

 obtaining a thesis degree. 



In Japan, the major constraint on 

 graduate enrollment is the lack of 

 associated employment opportuni- 



ties. For example, in 1983, 51.0 per- 

 cent of science and 44.9 percent of 

 agriculture doctoral graduates could 

 not get jobs, but this situation is ex- 

 pected to change. ^"^ During the past 

 2 decades, employment opportuni- 

 ties for engineers with master's de- 

 grees have improved: engineering 

 now accounts for 44 percent of all 

 master's degrees granted. At the 

 doctoral level, the most popular fields 

 are medicine and dentistry. Mon- 

 busho would like to see more stu- 

 dents enrolled in graduate education, 

 and has developed a program that 

 would lead to a threefold increase in 

 master's degree level enrollments and 

 a fourfold increase in doctoral en- 

 rollments by the year 2000. 



"Keiichi Yamada, "Kagukusha Yosei no Arikata 

 Buneki Suru: Ova-Dokuta Mondai, Chushin ni," 

 Shizen, January 1984, pp. 76-83. 



29 



