Japanese Professors' Perception toward the Quality of International Students' Study A Case Study of Hiroshima University 【Article】

As a part of Japan's efforts to internationalize, an ambitious plan was developed in the 1980's that setthe goal of accepting 100,000 foreign students into Japanese universities by the end of the 20th century.This target number was reached in May 2003 due to great support from the Japanese government. Uponthis accomplishment, the government reexamined the goals and implementation of the plan in order tointroduce new programs for improving the quality of international students' adjustment. However, mostresearch used to develop these new programs focuses only on the students' satisfaction and does nottake into account the quality of their academic performance, nor of the professors' perception of the stu-dents' academic performance.The analysis of a survey questionnaire (2001) completed by 131 Hiroshima University professorswho have international students in their Master's courses showed that when these professors teach inter-national students at the Master's level, they are motivated primarily by social rather than academic inter-ests and place lesser importance on the students' academic qualifications. It appears that these profes-sors of Hiroshima University are primarily accepting international students with the goal of improvingthe Japanese people's multicultural understanding as well as increasing cooperation between Japan andother countries. Allowing this to be the primary basis for acceptance into Hiroshima University, ratherthan academic qualifications, has led to the acceptance of some academically poor international stu-dents, professors' dissatisfaction with these international students' academic achievements, and a lessinternationally competitive higher education system.