This paper offers new qualitative insights into ongoing internationalization processes in Japanese higher education. Drawing on ideas from migration studies and informed by analysis of junior international faculty members' (JIFs) experiences in Japanese universities, we posit a novel, actor-centered typology of internationalization that delineates between integration, assimilation, and marginalization of mobile actors, and considers their implications in practice. Twenty-three interviews were conducted with JIFs from a variety of disciplines and institutions across Japan. Findings indicated a pattern of disillusionment with their role in internationalization, as many perceived themselves to be tokenized symbols of internationalization rather than valued actors within it. Participants identified various barriers which prevented them from participating in the academic "mainstream" and confined them to peripheral roles. We argue that their experiences are indicative of assimilative and marginalizing forms of internationalization, which pose persistent barriers to reform in Japanese universities despite decades of state-sponsored internationalization.
This paper explores the ways in which policies for national identity formation and internationalization interact to complement and contradict each other in the context of global higher education. These themes are explored by comparing recent policies in two countries in East Asia, a part of the world currently on the rise in the global hierarchy of higher education (Altbach in Tert Educ Manag 10:3-25, 2004; Marginson in High Educ 4(1), 2011b). China and Japan are presented as case studies, with a focus on the ways the two countries have pursued both higher education internationalization and nationalist agendas through education more broadly. The paper then turns to a discussion of the factors that might explain these approaches as well as the dilemmas that arise from the interaction of these policy agendas in the context of global higher education. The paper argues that while increasing global competitiveness through HE internationalization may prove beneficial to individual nation-states in the short term, countries in East Asia should consider the potential pitfalls of becoming too singly focused on competitiveness at the expense of mutual understanding and peaceful international relations in the region. Furthermore, the continued push to create uncritical nationalistic citizens threatens to undermine the goals of internationalization and may be detrimental to efforts at HE regional cooperation and integration. The paper concludes with recommendations that the two countries consider the potential benefits of global citizenship education and the expansion of regionally focused study abroad programs to help develop graduates with the global competencies conducive to both national competitiveness and regional cooperation.
In recent years, higher education (HE) institutions have increasingly been articulating the need to produce global citizens capable of meeting the social, political and economic demands of the 21st Century. The implementation of global citizenship programmes at the university level has been taking place against a backdrop of growing internationalization and marketization in higher education, leading some to conclude that universities are cultivating global workers rather than global citizens. This small-scale exploratory study aimed to explore these claims through the comparison of GCE programmes in two contrasting contextsthe UK and Japan. Through a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches to content analysis, our findings suggest that the universities in both the UK and Japanese contexts demonstrate examples of adaptation and localization of GCE to fit with institutional commitments, and both universities have significant elements of employability agendas infused into their programmes. The Japanese case tends to emphasise the development of 'global human resources', as well as the importance Japanese national identity, which aligns with critiques of Japan's typically ethnocentric and nationalistic approach to internationalization. The UK case, by contrast, refrains from any mention of the UK, and focuses instead on global and local issues as well as demonstrating a marketing-oriented approach emphasizing university branding and promotion. We argue that while different in many respects, the two programmes both demonstrate an adaptation of GCE to fit within broader internationalization strategies aimed at maximizing global competitiveness and an alignment with the neoliberal trends shaping the global higher education sector.
This study investigated scientific research collaborations among universities in Northeast Asia and sought to conceptualize how they might influence, and be influenced by, broader processes of regional integration in economic, political, and societal arenas. To investigate these dynamics, a program for regional collaboration initiated jointly by the governments of China, Japan, and South Korea was taken as a case study. Co-authored publication outputs, annual project reports, and interviews with program participants at Japanese universities were analyzed using selected theories from the field of International Relations. The interviews explored the ideas researchers had about the potential for the indirect effects of collaborations to spill over into other arenas, and the barriers faced which impeded regional cooperation. The findings suggest that while a number of barriers exist, the program has contributed to ongoing knowledge production and regional collaboration, societal integration, and the cultivation of a generation of regionally-networked young researchers.
This paper examines shifts in the knowledge production policy agenda at Japanese research universitiesa transition from discipline-based academic tradition towards interdisciplinary forms of knowledge productionthrough a case study of a leading interdisciplinary research institute. We examine this transition through the case of Tohoku University, one of seven 'Designated National Universities', and its flagship International Research Institute of Disaster Science. Documentary analysis revealed a renewed emphasis on interdisciplinarity, evident in restructuring towards a 'blended hybrid' model to reconcile the different institutional logics of diverse research traditions among its staff. Interviews with key stakeholders uncovered the internal dynamics of this process, its barriers and opportunities. We conclude with implications for Japanese higher education, arguing that a shift to 'blended hybrid' institutional forms is necessary but insufficient to maintain successful interdisciplinary research institutes. Success is contingent on simultaneous commitment to sustainable international connections and relationships with diverse external stakeholders.
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