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Part I
New contexts
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Chapter 2
Internationalization through English-medium instruction in Japan
Challenging a contemporary Dejima
Hiroshi Ota and Kiyomi Horiuchi
EMI: an international trend
“A high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island, some two hundred paces along its outer curve, . . . by eighty paces deep, and erected, like much of Amsterdam, on sunken piles” (Mitchell, 2010, p. 16). This is the portrait of Dejima appearing in British novelist David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. Literally translated as ‘Exit Island,’ Dejima was a man-made island off the coast of Nagasaki in southwestern Japan, constructed in 1636 as home to Dutch merchants. During the Edo period in Japanese history, when Japan had put in place a national isolation policy limiting interactions with other countries, trade and exchange with other countries took place exclusively on this small island. The aim was to protect Japan from foreign influences, while simultaneously importing necessary resources, such as foreign goods and Western knowledge. Dejima functioned as the sole gateway to the outside world, and it seems to mirror current efforts for the internationalization of Japanese higher education through English-medium instruction (commonly referred to as “EMI”).
The growth in number of EMI programs offered by higher education institutions in non-English speaking countries has recently become a remarkable phenomenon (Dearden, 2015). One of the factors behind this development is the advance of globalization, accompanied by the rapid movement of people, goods, services, money, and information across national borders; the internet has also played an important role in cementing English as the language of international communication. Academic research is not exempt from this trend. A cyclical system has been constructed in which a university rises up the global university rankings if a paper written in English by one of its researchers appears in a prominent journal, leading in turn to an improvement in its reputation. As such, for both higher education institutions and individual researchers, English acts as an indispensable tool for participation in international academic networks. This trend is also influencing university education. For universities in non-English-speaking countries, it is understood that the implementation of EMI advances the internationalization of the institution and demonstrates a sense of meaningful existence in a globalized world.
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Another major factor behind the establishment of EMI in non-English-speaking countries is the growth of the international student market (Wilkinson, 2013). According to the statistics compiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2015), the number of international students globally has grown steadily from 0.8 million in 1975, to 1.7 million in 1995, to 3 million in 2005, reaching nearly 4.5 million by 2012. Driven by economic development, population growth, and insufficient domestic provision of higher education in the emerging nations of Asia and elsewhere, studying abroad has undergone massive popularization, moving from a government-backed program for the elite to self-funded overseas study for self-actualization. This has resulted in a far larger body of internationally mobile students. EMI is seen as a potentially effective means of realizing strategies for participating in this enormous market and securing high-quality international students. In countries such as Japan, where the official language is one with low global currency, making the attainment of this national language a requirement for entry to higher education programs acts as a major obstacle in the acquisition of academically superior international students.
The origins of the spread of EMI can be found in Europe in the latter half of the 1980s. Accompanying the advance of the ERASMUS plan, which aimed to foster student exchange within Europe, EMI courses were established to cater to international students, enabling them to earn credits through classes taught in English.1 According to a large-scale survey of EMI courses offered in Europe (involving 28 countries), around 27% of the higher education institutions had put in place degree programs in English by 2014, and the number of such programs had climbed to 8,089 (Wächter & Maiworm, 2014). Meanwhile, in Asia, in addition to EMI developments in Singapore and Hong Kong (countries that derive their higher education models from the United Kingdom), EMI is currently promoted as a part of higher education internationalization policy in countries such as China, Malaysia, Thailand, and South Korea. Moreover, at the same time, Asian countries have been successful in attracting foreign universities to their shores. Universities from English-speaking countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia have set up branch campuses or offshore programs in the region, acting as a driving force behind the global expansion of transnational education (TNE) offered in English.
Phillipson (1992) set out a theory of “linguistic imperialism,” in which the world is made up of “centers” and “peripheries,” and language is positioned as a tool for hegemonic domination by the center. As such, the Anglo-Saxon countries, the United States and the United Kingdom, are criticized for spreading their language, English, in order to impose their will on and strengthen their domination of non-English-speaking countries. However, rapid globalization, the increasing accessibility of higher education to the general population, the dissemination of English as a lingua franca, and the economic development of emerging nations, have subsequently interacted in complex ways: EMI has gone beyond the relationship of dependence between centers and peripheries to become increasingly prominent as one of the diverse types of higher education programs demanded by the market.
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The development of EMI in Japan
EMI was first noted in Japanese higher education in 1949, when a bachelor’s program was established at Sophia University (a private Catholic university). Other small-scale EMI bachelor’s programs were subsequently opened at private universities. However, they were targeted at foreigners living in Japan, international students, and returnees from overseas; since they were rare exceptions from the standpoint of Japanese higher education as a whole, it was impossible for them to influence mainstream higher education. Changes to this trend were seen at the start of the 21st century. This coincided with a time when Japanese companies, which were struggling with an ongoing recession since the early 1990s and a shrinking domestic market caused by population decline, sought to expand overseas and began to proclaim the need for global personnel fit for this task. In order to respond to this business trend and the attendant demands of the labor market, in the early 2000s some private universities began offering EMI undergraduate programs aimed not simply at international students but also at Japanese students.
According to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT, 2017), there are 780 universities in Japan, of which the private sector accounts for 77.4%. Unlike the public sector, which can rely on a steady flow of operating funds from the national or local government, the private sector has a high degree of financial dependency on student tuition fees, making the securing of students an issue of vital operational importance. For this reason, the private sector is adept at rapidly responding to changes in the market and reflecting these in curricula and student services. Therefore, private universities were also the first to introduce EMI.
Within the Japanese higher education community, there were initially many skeptics of universities’ moves to set up new EMI undergraduate programs aimed mainly at Japanese students. However, Akita International University and Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, new institutions whose founding mission was the provision of EMI undergraduate programs, attracted a large number of both Japanese and international students, and many of their graduates went on to employment at Japan’s top companies. These success stories were extensively covered by the mass media, transforming the reputation of EMI.
In response to these changes, the Japanese government also committed to policies promoting EMI. In 2008, the government adopted the 300,000 International Students Plan, which aimed to more than double the number of international students in Japan (to a total of 300,000) by 2020. In addition to increasing the international competitiveness of Japanese universities, this policy reflected an intention to compensate for the contraction of the domestic population of 18-year-olds by attracting international students. This plan laid out as goals the construction of a system that would make studying in Japan more accessible for international students – for instance, through improved admissions processes (i.e., selection methods) – and the wider provision of degree programs in English (MEXT, 2008). In 2009, MEXT launched a competitive funding program, the Global 30 Project, as part of the 300,000 International Students Plan. This project was to provide annual internationalization grants of between 200 million and 400 million yen (USD 1.8 million–3.6 million) over a period of five years to each selected university, which was then required to put in place at least one undergraduate and one graduate EMI degree program (MEXT, 2009). The original plan was to select 30 universities but, influenced by budget cuts accompanying a change of government, the project did not expand beyond the 13 universities initially chosen. However, since these 13 universities (7 national and 6 private) were all leading comprehensive universities with long-established traditions, the project served to instill the idea among the university sector and society that the establishment of EMI degree programs was a necessary condition for joining the ranks of the top universities in Japan. Moreover, the Global 30 Project led to a turning point by introducing EMI undergraduate programs into the national university sector, whereas previously they had been developed primarily at private universities.
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While the main policy goal of the Global 30 Project was to attract international students, a policy project aiming to increase study abroad among Japanese students was also put in place. This was the Go Global Japan Project, launched in 2012. This project, which sought to reverse a decline in the number of Japanese students going abroad and to develop global personnel through study abroad experience, provided grants of between 120 million and 260 million yen (USD 1.0 million–2.3 million) annually over a five-year period to each university selected. The performance indicators for the project included not only the number of Japanese students undertaking study abroad, but also the achievement of target scores on English language tests such as TOEFL. As a result, of the 42 universities selected, almost all introduced EMI courses as a part of the curriculum, with the aim of improving the English proficiency of Japanese students.
In 2014, these earlier policy initiatives were followed by the larger and longer-term Top Global University Project. This promotes comprehensive initiatives for university internationalization, including the expansion of both inbound and outbound mobility, and the improvement of English proficiency among Japanese students. MEXT provides annual grants of between 200 million and 500 million yen (USD 1.8 million–4.5 million) to each of 37 selected universities (from among 140 applicant universities) over a 10-year period, beginning in 2014. These 37 universities were divided into two categories, Type A and Type B. There are 13 Type A universities and these focus on world-class research, with the goal of enabling them to aim for a place among the top 100 in world university rankings. There are 24 Type B universities, which are required to undertake institution-wide internationalization initiatives, becoming a driving force behind the globalization of Japanese society. Both types of universities are required to set numerical targets for 18 performance indicators, including numbers of international students, Japanese students studying abroad, foreign academics, and EMI courses and degree programs.
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Clark (1983) proposed a triangle model, in which three actors – the state, academics, and the market – influence one another to shape higher education trends. If we view EMI trends in Japan in terms of these three actors, we find that the business community (the market) first made the case for the need for globally minded personnel (with skills including English ability) from the second half of the 1990s. Next, from the early 2000s, the voluntary introduction of EMI became more widespread among private universities, which were quick to respond to market demands. Then, following these moves by the market and by private universities, from 2009 onwards the national government began to promote EMI through policy incentives. According to a survey by MEXT (2016), 37.1% of Japanese universities teach a part of the undergraduate curriculum using EMI, while 33.2% do so at the graduate level, representing respective increases of 10.6 percentage points and 5.0 percentage points on the figures from the survey five years earlier. On the other hand, there are still only 3.3% of universities offering programs in which an undergraduate degree can be obtained solely via EMI courses, and 14.3% offering such graduate degree programs. It can therefore be said that many universities are taking a cautious approach towards conducting EMI degree programs (where all courses are in English).
Divisions and tensions: the current situation of EMI in Japanese higher education
Due in part to the influence of national policy incentives, EMI is gradually on the rise in Japan, with two main identifiable approaches. One targets Japanese students, with the aim of improving their English language ability or developing a globally minded workforce; the other principally targets international students (Shimauchi, 2016). We focus here on the latter type, discussing the divisions and tensions that have arisen within Japanese universities. The reason for doing so is that, while EMI for Japanese students can be classed as an extension of existing English language education, the introduction of EMI degree programs – which presuppose the enrollment of non-Japanese-speaking international students – presents a new challenge for Japanese universities, where education, research, and university management have traditionally been conducted in Japanese. The term ‘English divide’ is used to represent a division within society between those with English language ability and those without; at Japanese universities, divisions around EMI are occurring at the institutional level.
Student divide
The most common format for setting up an EMI degree program targeted at international stu...
