University years in Japan have traditionally served not so much to educate as to provide a respite between the years-long student ordeal of cramming for the notoriously competitive entrance exams and adult life in the corporate world. Once enrolled, a university student faces an easy ride: There is little homework, few reports are required, professors rarely track attendance, and it is almost impossible to flunk out.
This may change, however, as an advisory council last week urged universities to tighten up grading practices and graduation requirements. The report from the University Council, an advisory body to Monbusho, the science and education ministry, calls for raising research and educational standards, partly through more objective assessments of students and faculty. "Previously, the quality of a university graduate was judged not by what they had learned but by what university they graduated from," it says.
To address this, the report urges that attendance, class participation, and midterm exams and reports figure into course grades, which are now typically based only on a final exam or report. It also urges the adoption of a grade-point average system to create an overall student performance measure. This could provide a mechanism for raising minimum graduation requirements; now, even straight-D students get diplomas. The council also calls for Monbusho to set up an outside body to evaluate universities' educational programs.
The 226-page report contains a host of other recommendations for making Japanese universities competitive in the coming century. It says, for example, that they should focus on areas of particular strength and should put more emphasis on continuing education programs.
Shinichi Yamamoto, director of the University of Tsukuba's Research Center for University Studies, says new quality-control measures "could be a good thing educationally," but that introducing meaningful evaluations will require overcoming a cultural reluctance to objectively critique individuals or institutions. "It's questionable whether Japanese society can change that suddenly," he says.
