Higher education in Japan is provided at universities (大学 daigaku), junior colleges (短期大学 tanki daigaku), colleges of technology (高等専門学校 kōtō senmon gakkō) and special training schools and community colleges (専修学校 senshū gakkō). Of these four types of institutions, only universities and junior colleges are strictly considered postsecondary education providers. The modern Japanese higher education system has undergone numerous changes since the Meiji period and was largely modeled after Western countries such as Britain, France, Germany, and the United States of America combined with traditional Japanese pedagogical elements to create a unique Japanese model to serve its national needs. Unlike higher education in some other countries, public universities in Japan are generally regarded as more prestigious than private universities, especially the National Seven Universities (University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, Tohoku University, Kyushu University, Hokkaido University, Osaka University, and Nagoya University).
The Japanese higher education system differs from higher education in most other countries in many significant ways. Key differences include the method of admissions, which relies almost entirely on one or two tests, as opposed to the usage of GPAs or percentages or other methods of assessment and evaluation of prospective applicants used in countries throughout the Western world. As students only have one chance to take this test each year, there is an enormous amount of pressure to perform well on it, as the majority of the time during a student's senior high school years is dedicated to performing well on this single test. Japanese high school students are faced with immense pressure to succeed academically from their parents, extended family members, teachers, guidance counselors, peers, and society at large. This mindset is largely based on a result of a traditional society that has historically placed an enormous amount of importance on the encouragement of study on top of the merits of scholarship and benefits of pursuing higher education, especially in an education system that places all of its weight upon a single examination that has significant life-long consequences on one's eventual socioeconomic status, promising marriage prospects, entrance into a prestigiously elite white-collar occupation, and a respectable professional career path.
As the Japanese economy is largely scientific and technological based, its labor market demands people who have achieved some form of higher education, particularly related to science and engineering in order to gain a competitive edge over their peers when it comes to seeking for employment. According to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), the percentage of Japanese going on to any higher education institution in the eighteen-year-old cohort was 80.6 percent, with 52.6 percent of students going on to a university, 4.7 percent to a junior college, 0.9 percent to a college of technology and the remaining 22.4 percent attending a correspondence school, the Open University of Japan, or a specialized training college.
History
The modern Japanese higher education system was adapted from a number of methods and ideas inspired from Western education systems that were integrated with their traditional Shinto, Buddhist, and Confucianist pedagogical philosophies that served as the system's fundamental basis. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, many major reforms were introduced in the field of higher education across Japan, which contributed to individual work of students as well as the nation's overall originality, creativity, individuality, identity, and internationalization of higher education.
During the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan actively embarked on a vigorous campaign of Westernization in order to modernize its education system, with a particular focus on higher education. This included a targeted effort in its focused initiative to revitalize its educational system, specifically emphasizing higher education, that would successfully assimilate its importation of transmitted Western knowledge to help realize the nation's ambitions to spur modern industrialization. Numerous Japanese university students were dispatched to Europe for academic purposes, while several foreign scholars from Western nations were also welcomed to Japan during the same time period to conduct an exchange of academic pursuits. During the 1880s, Japan sought to search for a higher education system prototype to model in order to suit its national needs. In 1881, the Meiji government decided to convert its institutional model, influenced from a variety of Western countries such as Great Britain, the United States and France, to a strictly German-oriented model as the Prussian model of higher education greatly interested the Meiji government at the time.
Prussia served as the largest inspiration for the modern Japanese higher education system, as German universities were regarded as one of the most innovative in all of Europe in addition to 19th-century Germany being close to Japan in its goals for industrialization. Furthermore, the Meiji government greatly admired the Prussian government bureaucracy, largely dominated by law school graduates, and it sought to absorb the Prussian prototype into the unique Japanese model. Inspired by the American, British, and French models on top of a predominantly-Prussian prototype that served as the fundamental basis for the Japanese model, Japan's modern higher education system soon became a catalyzing impetus that propelled the island archipelago's development as a major world power during the late 19th and the early 20th centuries.
At the higher education level, Japan sought to incorporate a number of higher education ideas to suit its national needs. Many books, manuscripts, and documents from the West were translated and foreign professors were common during the Meiji era to disseminate Western knowledge in the arts and sciences as well as Western pedagogical teaching methods. For a modern university model, Japan incorporated many Prussian elements found in that of Germany as the German Empire at the time was similar to Japan in terms of goals for colonial expansion and national development. The German model continued to inspire the Japanese higher education system until the end of World War I. During the American occupation of World War II, Japan incorporated higher education ideas developed in the United States to modernize its higher education for the contemporary era. The contemporary Japanese higher education system now boasts elements incorporated from the United States on top of its European origins. The expansion and development of modern higher education in Japan has contributed to its economic growth after World War II which continued on until the late 1980s.
University
Entrance University entrance is the traditional route taken by Japanese students to enter the gateway of higher education as it is by far the most prestigious form of higher education in the country. In contrast to the practice of relying on grade point averages and percentages for assessing eligibility in countries like Canada and the United States, entrance to universities in Japan is primarily determined by the scores obtained in entrance examinations (), which serve as the main criteria for university admission. People enrolled in undergraduate schools are awarded bachelor's degrees which take four to six years. Graduate schools award master's (2 years), doctoral (3 years), and professional degrees (2–3 years). Though 88.7 percent of Japanese universities are private, the top ten universities in Japan are elite research institutions where 8 of them are national (University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, Tohoku University, Kyushu University, Hokkaido University, Osaka University, Nagoya University, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology) and the remaining two being private institutions (Keio University and Waseda University). Private institutions accounted for nearly 80% of all university enrollments in 1991, but with a few exceptions such as Waseda University and Keio University, the public national universities are more highly regarded, especially the National Seven Universities which are the most prestigious. This distinction had its origins in historical factors—the long years of dominance of the select imperial universities, such as the University of Tokyo and the University of Kyoto, which trained Japan's leaders before the war—and also in differences in quality, particularly in facilities and faculty ratios.
In order to secure employment at a major Japanese corporation or an international company that is based in Japan, earning a degree from a prestigious university isn't mandatory. Yet, certain prestigious employers throughout the country, most notably the Japanese government and a select number of large Japanese corporations (e.g. those listed in Nikkei 225), continue to restrict their hiring of prospective employees to graduates of the nation's most esteemed universities. In the context of employment recruitment, the educational background of individuals from universities holds considerable importance and remains a crucial element in the hiring process. This is due to the well-established connection between the reputation of the university a person graduated from and their chances of obtaining desirable job opportunities and promising career paths. Attending a prestigious Japanese university, particularly one known for a strong academic reputation, can often be the pivotal tiebraker in securing a lucrative, prestigious, and secure white-collar profession. Due to the paramount significance that this determining factor holds in the recruitment and hiring process, Japanese employers continue to place a high value on academic achievements, educational background, co-op and internship experience, as well as the reputation of educational institutions when assessing and selecting highly qualified candidates for job vacancies. Amongst prospective university applicants who aspire to enter the halls of the nation's most prestigious universities, competition in securing and matriculating the most highly sought-after spots at the country's most esteemed universities continues to remain fierce. A common custom practiced by Japanese employers is simultaneous recruiting of new graduates.
Students applying to national or other public universities take two entrance examinations. Firstly, a nationally administered uniform multiple-choice achievement test (大学入学共通テスト, Daigaku Nyūgaku Kyōtsū Tesuto), and then an examination separately administered by the university the student hopes to enter (niji shiken (二次試験)). For example, for the University of Tokyo, the second exam includes five subjects: mathematics, Japanese, one foreign language, and either two natural sciences subjects or two social sciences subjects. For national and public universities, applicants usually have only one chance, as all national and public universities conduct exams on the same dates (25, 26, and 27 February). Applicants to private universities typically need to take only the university's examination, usually covering fewer subjects (1-3), and they are allowed to apply to as many universities and degrees as they want, as long as the test dates don't overlap.