proportion of degrees in fields other 

 than science and engineering.^' Ja- 

 pan grants 19 percent of its first uni- 

 versity degrees in engineering (7 

 percent in the United States) and 3 

 percent in the natural sciences (11 

 percent in the United States). Anal- 

 ysis of the career histories of uni- 

 versity graduates suggests that many 

 of the graduates of Japan's engi- 

 neering and agriculture courses as- 

 sume jobs analogous to those taken 

 on by U.S. science graduates. 



With a population size just over 

 one-half that of the United States, 

 Japan in 1976 first exceeded the 

 United States in the granting of first- 

 degree engineering degrees; it re- 

 tained this lead through 1982, after 

 which time the number of engi- 

 neering degrees granted in the 

 United States surpassed that of Ja- 

 pan. (In 1985, the United States con- 

 ferred 9 percent more engineering 

 degrees than did Japan. )^^ 



"There are some difficulties in comparing social 

 sciences. In the United States, undergraduate social 

 sciences include a narrow range of specialties; in 

 Japan, the range is broader and includes such fields 

 as commerce and law. Comparisons of the "social 

 sciences" and "all other" categories should be treated 

 with some caution; however, the two categories 

 combined do provide comparable representations 

 of activity in fields other than natural sciences and 

 engineering. 



'■Note the difficulties of cross-national compari- 

 sons of numbers and proportions receiving first- 

 degree engineering degrees. Some maintain that 

 Japanese training in engineering is at a lower level 

 than U.S. trairung. Most Japanese educators dispute 

 this view, and maintain that Japanese engineering 

 students receive greater exposure to both basic sci- 

 ence subjects and laboratory work. 



While figures on engineering de- 

 grees by detailed field are not avail- 

 able for Japan, it is possible to 

 compare enrollments. Both Japan and 

 the United States have about the 

 same shares of engineering enroll- 

 ments in mechanical and electrical/ 

 computer engineering combined (49- 

 52 percent), but greater emphasis is 

 on mechanical engineering in Japan 

 and electrical engineering in the 

 United States. The distributions of 

 enrollments among engineering 

 fields are also generally different (ta- 

 ble 4). The actual number of Japa- 

 nese students enrolled in engineering 

 significantly exceeds U.S. enroll- 

 ments in the fields of mechanical. 



chemical, civil, and metallurgical/ 

 materials engineering. U.S. enroll- 

 ments in electrical and computer and 

 aeronautics/aerospace engineering 

 are much higher than in Japan (the 

 aerospace industry in the United 

 States is much larger than in Japan). 

 One major qualifying factor to these 

 comparisons is that the United States 

 has a much higher proportion of "all 

 other" engineering majors (half of 

 which are undeclared majors) than 

 does Japan (table 4). 



Foreign students have tradition- 

 ally constituted an exceptionally 

 small portion of Japanese under- 

 graduate enrollments (less than 1 

 percent in 1984); at the graduate level. 



Table 4. Enrollments in first-degree engineering programs by field of 



study:' 1985 



Field of study 



Total 



Mechanical 



Electrical and computer . . 



Chemical 



Civil 



Engineering science 



Nuclear 



Mining 



Metallurgical and materials 



Marine 



Aeronautic/aerospace 



Industrial 



All others 



Japan 



Number 



343,590 



74,354 



95,429 



39,679 



75,801 



5,966 



1,551 



1,623 



7,226 



1,003 



2,428 



19,829 



18,701 



Percent 



100.0 



21.6 



27.8 



11.5 



22.1 



1.7 



.5 



.5 



2.1 



.3 



.7 



5.8 



5.4 



United States 



Number 



384,191 



66,738 



132,917 



23,423 



37,556 



7,092 



1,857 



2,431 



3,204 



2,068 



15,699 



16,434 



277,781 



Percent 



100 00 



17.4 



34.6 



6.1 



98 



1.8 



.5 



.6 



.8 



.5 



4.1 



4,3 



20.2 



'Full-time students only 



^Hall of this group are undeclared engineering maiors 



SOURCES: Government olJapan, Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture. /(nnua/Schoo/ Survey 1984 (Tokyo, Japan, 1985), and fng/neermg 



education (October 1986), p 59 



28 



