日本の留学生政策と実態に関する考察 : 中国人留学生を事例として <論考>

This paper aims to find out whether there are mismatches between Japan’s policies on international students and the realities of attracting these students.　　

Firstly, this paper studied the policy approaches on international students both on the receiving and sending side. As for the receiving side, there are four discernable rationales for receiving international students at a policy level: promoting mutual understanding, or skilled migration, generating revenue, and building capacity. As for the sending side, the motivation for study abroad is extraordinarily complicated due to the fact that most international students pay their own expenses. They must weigh the cost of studying abroad against the benefit in terms of learning from a foreign experience before they make the decision.　　

Secondly, this paper analyzed the policies on international students in Japan. There are two such important policies. The first is the “Plan for accepting 100,000 international students” in 1983, which emphasizes the quantity of international students. The second is the “Plan for accepting 300,000 international students”, which emphasizes the acceptance of international students with high quality.　　

Thirdly, by analyzing national data about the international students in Japan and interviewing Chinese students at Hiroshima University, we identify mismatches between the policies on international students and the realities of attracting these students. The main purpose of current policy on international students is to attract persons of talent. However, because of the expensive opportunity cost of studying in Japan, the scholarships provided by the Japanese government become less attractive to international students. At the same time, Japan hopes to accept students in Science and Engineering fields, but most of the international students are studying in the field of Humanities. Another purpose of accepting international students is to offset the decline in Japan’s birthrate recruiting a skilled workforce: however, most of the Chinese students are only children and thus have a strong desire to return home, or move to western countries. Consequently, there are mismatches between the sending country and receiving county in the case of Chinese students studying in Japan.