GIAPPONE. L’INTERNAZIONALIZZAZIONE DELLE UNIVERSITÀ Stampa

Japanese universities are notoriously poor when it comes to internationalization. The country has just over 150,000 international students, who comprise less than 5 per cent of its overall student population, according to 2015 data from the Institute of International Education (IIE) – compared with 21 per cent of students in the UK, for instance, and 11 per cent in the Netherlands. Almost half these (49 per cent) come from China. The US is the top sending country outside Asia, but it accounts for just 1.5 per cent of Japan’s total overseas student cohort. Meanwhile, little more than 80,000 Japanese studied abroad in 2015, almost a quarter of whom went to the US. The country fares little better when it comes to the mobility of its researchers. Of the 260,000 active Japanese researchers between 1996 and 2014, almost two-thirds (63 per cent) have never published with affiliations outside Japan during this period, according to Elsevier’s SciVal tool. This compares with just 29 per cent of UK academics. Meanwhile, only 4.9 per cent of researchers in Japan have worked elsewhere for at least two years before moving to Japan, while a similarly small proportion (5.4 per cent) are based abroad after working in Japan for at least two years. UEA’s Burton says that she expected the percentage of foreign scholars in the country to rise after she left in 2013, but, on her annual visits back, she is told there has been no change. However, the Japanese government is providing funding for institutions to improve in this area. In 2009, the country launched its Global 30 project to encourage 300,000 young foreigners to study at Japanese universities by 2020, and several institutions began offering undergraduate programs taught wholly in English. Then, in 2014, this initiative was replaced with the ¥7.7 billion (£55 million) Top Global University project, which aims to help position more of the country’s institutions in the top 100 worldwide by recruiting more foreign professors and students. And there is also a target for 120,000 Japanese students to participate in short-term study-abroad trips by 2020. (Fonte: www.timeshighereducation.com 30-03-17)