Japan wants Super Universities

Nieuws | de redactie

5 augustus 2013 | Japan wants to boost the quality and prestige of its universities and aims to have ten universities in the world’s top 100 in the next decade. The education ministry provides every selected university with more than 75 million euro a year to achieve this and thereby boost the country’s industrial competitiveness.

The Japanese ministry for Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology presented these plans in its 2014 budget outlay. The government will select 10, both private and public universities for the program that will stimulate joint research with foreign universities. The program also aims at attracting famous international scholars to the Land of the Rising Sun.  

By improving the global rankings of Japan’s universities, the government hopes to enhance the country’s industrial competitiveness. The stimulation plan for Japanese universities is an important part of the national growth strategy that was presented in June.

Abe more ambitious than Putin

The Japanese plan closely resembles the Russian strategy to boost its higher education sector. Japan calls the selected institutions “super global universities” while the Russians talk about ‘upgrading for world competition of Russian universities’. It looks like that Shinzo Abe is even more ambitious than his Russian colleague. Putin has a budget of 200 million euro for the entire program while Japan spends 750 million euro per year, for 10 years.

In the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2012 only two Japanese universities could be found in the top 100. The University of Tokyo was ranked 27th and the Kyoto University could be found on the 54th place.