Education In Japan: The School As A Business, Teachers And Students As Commodities

Education is one of the keys to individual and national advancement and development in life.In many countries university education is open to all while in other nations such as Japan, it has to be paid for.Irrespective of the costs, university students should receive a quality education from universities and universities should expect quality academic work from students.As educators are professionals working in the field of delivering education they should have even higher expectations for the quality of education being delivered than students.However in today’s Japan are these expectations of quality teachers and students actually being met? This paper firstly provides a general overview of post war university educational in Japan.Then university education is examined in detail to see if these academic expectations are being met and argues that on the whole they are not.The areas where Japanese universities are deficient, namely in the quality of education delivered and treatment of teachers and students alike are then examined.Also areas where the university’s actions have been detrimental to the development, academic or otherwise, of students and teachers alike are covered.Later it examines the university as a business rather than an educational establishment to try and explain the actions of universities that are often contradictory to the educational ideals expected by teachers and students at university.Lastly it offers suggestions for improving the quality of education at Japanese universities and shows why this is necessary for the survival of universities in Japan.