Top global university project and THE world university rankings ～WHY have Todai/東大 not achieved the first rank in THE university rankings ～

I have been very dubious about 偏差値 and THE world university ranking even though these standards are often cited in many articles/posts/writings etc.
I wrote about the problems about this ranking in 2020 when I was in the first grade at my university. (I wrote it as a final paper in the class that I took at that time.)
My English might be terrible (especially I do not use "a" and "the" correctly) and some parts of it are not completely understandable.  If you are interested in it, however, please have a look. Thank you.

Introduction
The Japanese government started Top global university project in 2014.
The universities which are selected as promising universities have been carrying out an educational reform based on the project. However, it is unsure that whether the project which aims to have ten universities to rank in the top one hundred worldwide brings benefits to students both at home and abroad. This paper will argue that the relation between Top global university project and THE world university rankings. First of all, I would like to state my definition of internationalization of higher education. Internationalization of higher education is a invisible process to integrate cultural dimensions, theories, and ideology in other countries into higher educational systems. Internationalization of higher education is important for me because it enables me to enjoy the opportunities to learn foreign languages, meet international students, and take classes in English. It is also beneficial and significant to Japanese universities. When Japanese universities cooperate with more foreign universities, they will be able to adopt more competent students who are promising employees in the future. Accepting future labor forces is essential for Japan where the number of workers is decreasing year by year. Therefore, internationalization of higher education is crucial to Japan.

Problems of THE world university rankings
This chapter will argue about the problems of THE world university rankings. Science papers are highly evaluated than liberal arts papers in the rankings. Moreover, science papers gain more worldwide reputations than liberal arts papers. This is because scientists always present a new discovery in international conferences. In addition, they write papers in English in other to tell outcomes of their research to peoples across the world. In other words, science reserchers in Japan heavily depend on international communities. On the other hand, almost all liberal arts papers are written in Japanese. According to researchers’ list in Osaka university in 2006, around eighty percent of literature papers and about ninety percent of law papers is written in Japanese. These papers are invisible for other researchers or students who do not use Japanese. Furthermore, researchers who make THE world university rankings use bibliometrics indicators which assess only papers written in English. Therefore, most of liberal arts papers written in Japanese are not evaluated in THE world university rankings. (Ishikawa, 2016) This means that universities in non-English-speaking countries have disadvantages because their performances are not fully evaluated in THE world university rankings. Times Educational Institution had taken these language problems or cultural differences into consideration until 2014. They added scores to some universities to treat all universities equally. However, they changed the way to evaluate universities in 2015. They quit adding scores as much as they had done until 2014. Since then, Japanese universities which ranked high have dropped their ranks. To put it another way, the slight changes of the way to evaluation have a significant effect on rankings.

Bad effects of THE world university rankings
There are two bad effects which THE world university rankings have on Japanese universities. Firstly, a distinguished feature of each university will vanish because of THE world university rankings. Most of the selected universities are planning to write syllabus in English or accept more foreign faculty. In short, they are changing their educational system in the same way. Hence, both international and domestic students cannot tell the differences from each university. They will not find Japanese universities attractive in the future. Secondly, there is a possibility that the fund will be concentrated on limited academic fields. Since the Japanese government are desperately trying to increase rankings of Japanese universities, they might subsidize only selected universities and scientific fields. (Ishikawa, 2016) This means that the government support only the academic fields or educational institutions which greatly contribute to increase universities’ rankings. It is estimated that scientific fields such as engineering, medicine, and natural science occupy more than three quarters of the fund in 2018. （Research in Japan.com ,2018）Therefore, if the government continues to do so, the financial gap between liberal arts and science will widen significantly.

History of Japan and usefulness of THE world university rankings
There are two reasons why Japanese universities trust THE world university rankings. Firstly, the Japanese government afraid that Japan will fall behind western countries. Since the civilization in 1868, Japan had tried catching up with western countries by creating a new educational system based on French and American ones. The government these days follows what they did two hundred years ago. Secondly, THE world university rankings are considered to assure the quality of students. When the universities cooperate or conclude an agreement of exchange program with other universities, they use THE world university rankings to know whether they are at the same academic level or not. For these reasons, Japanese universities rely on THE world university rankings.

Problems of higher educational system in Japan
Although there are the large number of problems in THE world university rankings, Japanese universities should not be content with their rankings. There is room for improvement. Firstly, they should not increase the number of classes which are delivered in English. Rather, they should increase the number of Japanese classes which both international and domestic students can take. It is true that Japanese is a minority language. It is said that international students often face the language barriers in Japan. Therefore, it is reasonable that Japanese universities carry out English classes in other to accept more international students and promote internationalization of higher education. However, just because Japanese students take classes in English, it does not necessarily follow that they will be able to command English. In addition, Japan ranked fortieth in forty-eight countries in 2013 on the average score of TOEIC. (Hongo,2014) Hence, when the universities force Japanese students to take more English classes, they cannot deepen their study as they do in Japanese classes. Furthermore, increasing English courses does not helpful for international students who want to learn Japanese in Japan. It is necessary to meet a demand of international students. Finally, the definition of foreign faculty in Top global university project is vague. Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, or MEXT aims to increase the rate of foreign faculty. However, they do not mention whether foreign professors have educational experience or research experience. In fact, most of foreign professors are Japanese and they do not get degrees in foreign countries. (Kariya, 2017) That is to say, the universities adopt Japanese professors as foreign faculty in other to achieve the goal of raising the rate of foreign teachers.

Conclusion
Given the problems of Japanese university, there are three things to improve the quality of top global university project. Firstly, each university should place value on its uniqueness. For example, Osaka university has a language faculty. Therefore, it should provide the opportunities to learn various kinds of foreign languages to both international and domestic students. Secondly, universities should increase the number of Japanese classes. As it is said above, merely expanding the number of English courses is not always good for students. Finally, they should refer other university rankings such as QS world university rakings or Academic Rankings of World Universities. Other evaluations will give universities an objective perspective. In conclusion, THE world university rankings sometimes have a bad influence on Top global university programs. It is necessary to make a project which is appropriate or suitable to the current situation in Japan. Therefore, utilizing each universities’ strengths, delivering more Japanese classes, and looking from another perspective are important for internationalization of higher education.

Citation

石川真由美　「世界大学ランキングと知の序列化」京都大学学術振興会
2016年　17頁～18頁、 24頁

苅谷剛彦　「オックスフォードからの警鐘 - グローバル化時代の大学論」
中公新書ラクレ
2017年　59頁～66頁

Jun Hongo (2014) “Japan Ranks 40th of 48 Countries in TOEIC Scores”
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Retrieved July 22th, 2020 from
https://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2014/07/18/japan-ranks-40th-of-48-countries-in-toeic-scores

日本の研究.com 「推定分野別　研究費の割合（５年間の合計）」
https://research-er.jp/　最終閲覧日：2020年7月２２日


References

日本学術振興会「スーパーグローバル大学創成事業」
https://www.jsps.go.jp/j-sgu/h26_kekka_saitaku.html　最終閲覧日：2020年７月２２日

畠山勝太「日本人がほとんど知らない世界大学ランキングの問題点」現代ビジネス2018年
https://gendai.ismedia.jp/articles/-/57892?page=4　最終閲覧日；2020年７月２２日

読み返してみたら、少し恥ずかしいけれど、当時の考え方を知れて面白いとも思う。