[Puffer Fish]

In Japan, plummeting university enrollment forecasts what’s ahead for the U.S., Jon Marcus, April 18, 2023, The Hechinger Report
https://hechingerreport.org/in-japan-pl ... r-the-u-s/

As many of you may know, universities were seen as a very serious thing in Japan. Over 50% of Japanese have a college degree, significantly higher than the level in developed white nations. A university degree was almost seen as essential to success in Japan and virtually all Japanese parents strove for their children to get one. Great importance was placed on university education.

But today, Japanese universities are beginning to experience an alarming decline in enrollment - fewer students. And many believe America may be next. What is happening in Japan could be a preview of what is going to happen in America in the next 15 years.

A big part of this is due to the declining birth rates. There are simply fewer 18 year olds in Japan than there used to be, fewer students to go to university.

As a consequence, many of these Japanese universities, which have huge sprawling campuses, are probably going to close. Several of the high tier universities have even grown desperate and are relaxing their entrance requirements. Whereas in 1991 Japanese universities only accepted 6 out of 10 applicants, today they accept 9 of 10.

At least 11 universities in Japan shut down from 2000 to 2020, and there were 29 mergers, compared to only three in the 50 years before that.

Keisen University and International Christian University, both semi-famous universities in Tokyo, will probably close soon.

The situation is even more dire in many rural areas which have experienced an emptying out of the younger generation. A few prefectures (local governments) have even taken over the operation of private universities that were failing, because otherwise there would no longer be a university in that area. The rural areas have been struggling with an exodus of university educated young people into the big cities.

The onset in the 1990s of "shoushikoureika", or the aging of Japan’s population, coincided with the start of a recession here that the Japanese call "the lost 30 years". Now the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects that under current demographic trends, the Japanese gross domestic product (GDP) will continue to decrease over the next 40 years.

related threads:
Why fewer Americans are going to college
College Closings Signal Start of a Crisis in Higher Education

This of course has to do with population demographics, but I think part of it also has to do with the collapse of the "education bubble".

[Puffer Fish]

"When the economic bubble burst in the late 1980s, more than 40 American-style colleges that peppered Japan's educational landscape went under, now leaving only four, one with an ambitious foothold in Akita. Minnesota State University -- Akita was founded in May 1990 based on an agreement between Akita Prefecture and the U.S. state of Minnesota to foster global-minded people. MSU-A was also hit hard by the collapse of the bubble economy -- fewer than 100 students entered the school in 1993. But it has regained its strength and now accommodates 308 Japanese and 43 American students and a faculty of 60."​
article: Minnesota college living out bubble's burst in Akita, The Japan Times, October 6, 1997

[Verv]

Oh yes, we have been seeing the same thing in Korea.

Just half of universities outside of Seoul are expected to survive the next 25 years or so.

This stuff is hard to calculate, though, because as some universities close, others consolidate, or parts of them go to other universities while a core rebrands itself as a specialty school that still qualifies as a college/university, but they say that something like '38 different universities will close' for budgetary reasons in Korea.

Many universities rely very heavily in the current era on foreign students. Schools are in competition to fill their seats with Chinese, Vietnamese, Uzbek, Thai, etc. students, and so there are even certain universities that specialize in accommodating certain foreign communities...

If it is a weaker university without much draw among the local population, it veritably turns them into a degree mill that lowers standards to meet the demands of foreign and local students. I've heard professors say that they have to basically negotiate grades occasionally with students who really shouldn't be passing at all.

The US will definitely feel this as well - especially at state schools without much of a brand. The Ivy League and big name schools might see a lowering of the quality of students as they opt to maintain the student body population, sacrificing quality, while places like the University of Nebraska Oklahoma State University will find themselves downsizing and very grateful to anyone showing up from abroad at all.

... The fertility crisis is going to be wild. ^^

[Puffer Fish]

Many universities rely very heavily in the current era on foreign students. Schools are in competition to fill their seats with Chinese, Vietnamese, Uzbek, Thai, etc. students, and so there are even certain universities that specialize in accommodating certain foreign communities...

This is very true in the U.S. at this time and over the past 10 years, but if you read the article in the link, the number of foreign students to the U.S. from China seems to be on the downward trend. Apparently as the U.S. economy is headed downhill, U.S. universities are seen as less prestigious by foreigners.

[Verv]

This is very true in the U.S. at this time and over the past 10 years, but if you read the article in the link, the number of foreign students to the U.S. from China seems to be on the downward trend. Apparently as the U.S. economy is headed downhill, U.S. universities are seen as less prestigious by foreigners.

Right, I think there is also growing awareness that getting some degree from the University of Indiana and bragging about it is... a little bit sad. Now, I am not talking down the state of Indiana, but what does this University offer that a provincial university anywhere else doesn't offer..?

More LGBTQ & African diaspora studies? These are serious topics, of course, and all things deserve to be studied... I am merely suggesting that many liberal arts departments in the West have actually had their quality undermined by the influence and power of these topics at the expense of other topics.

Honestly, there are universities in places like Poland and Argentina that are going to be staffed by very serious, competitive academics who got a very good grip on more classical style education that you'd see in the mid-20th century Western world that will provide better educations than American universities with recognizable names whose priorities have gone sideways over the last couple decades.

You could even put this a little differently: American universities over the last few decades have accomplished their mission in the sense that there have been tens of millions of foreigners who have gone through them and acquired the tools necessary to set up rich academic environments throughout the world, including in countries that sometimes are still dismissed as developing. That's wonderful.