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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