Courses in English (info, not a request)

[yipidee]

Anyone hear more about this? Sitting beside a guy reading the paper on the train today and I was drawn to a story about ways of attracting top class students from abroad. It seems from next year there'll be engineering and science courses taught exclusively through English at some Japanese universities.

The man got off the train so I couldn't read the article in any detail, but there seems to be a lot of people on these forums looking to study through English in Japan, this could be their chance.

[yukon988]

I don't know about that in particular but English is the international language for technology companies and Japanese tech companies understand that. Maybe they are pressuring Japanese Universities to do that.

I work with Engineers in France and Germany and they have told me that all of their technical subjects -- from grade school through University -- are taught entirely in English. Maybe Japan is going to try and follow that model. Not necessarily to attract foreign students but to improve the English ability of the young Japanese engineers and scientists. Of course, if they do that, it could make it easier for foreign students to attend Japanese Universities.

[Welesley]

The other pressure is that Japanese PhD students can't defend their thesis in English. You are supposed to do it in 2 languages, most just do an abstract and leave it at that.

Japanese Unis are always being hit on that point plus if you can't share your research what is the point???

[yipidee]

I'm from an English speaking country but did my masters in Scandinavia because all (at least technical) masters are taught in English, or with an option to do them in English. There were hundreds of international students studying together through English. It's becoming almost standard for masters level technical subjects in Europe to be taught in Japanese, I just thought it interesting that Japan is going to adopt the model. It potentially opens up Japanese universities to students from all over the world. Surely that could only be a good thing for education on the whole.

As for it being a method to improve Japanese students' ability to defend their research in English, considering how poor they are at it in their own language can't see it helping too much (tongue in cheek!)

[Xentropa]

Out of the 15 top schools in Japan, only Science programs, engineering, medicine have degree programs where a substantial amount of English knowledge is required or beneficial.