Will Japan change their school and business calendar to start in September? (match the global calend

All of Japan begins every calendar year in the spring in April. The school year, universities, new employees for companies, businesses, programs, basically everything. The challenge that Japanese have not seen is that the school calendar has always been a mismatch with non-Japanese schools and universities outside of Japan. The majority of non-Japanese universities and schools start in the fall, usually in September, basically this is considered the present global standard calendar. Many Japanese professors who are involved in international education have wanted the Japanese school year changed to September but have always met with huge resistance from Japanese companies, university staff and faculty, and almost everyone else. The standard reasoning was always that everything is built around an April start. To change the start date to September would be expensive and too much trouble. Job recruiting and hiring, entrance examinations are all built around the school calendar starting in April and ending in March. But due to this calendar mismatch with outside schools and universities, this has hurt Japanese students from having more opportunity to study abroad or to go on exchange programs because if they are to go, they can only go from the fall semester which is their second semester and stay through June, returning in the middle of their Japanese university’s first semester.

The fall departure for study abroad or exchange programs can work but Japanese students cannot start in the spring semester because the Japanese fall semester ends in February with final testing. Only in some countries like Australia is it still possible to attend in the spring or those US schools who run on a quarter system, but overall, most schools start in the fall semester or some are trimester based and both do not fit well with Japan’s April to March school calendar. So that will mean less Japanese students can study abroad for studies as well as many Japanese universities have their inbound exchange and international student programs on the same Japanese calendar. This means that students cannot come in the spring semester because the start is so late in April. So basically, you are limiting both directions to fall entry and usually there is a limit on the number of students on exchange for each semester. For those students who want to do only one semester abroad, they will be limited to only fall semester, because spring is not usually possible.

In overall global rankings, Japan has not done well. The two top national universities are Tokyo University (30) and Kyoto University is about (65). No other Japanese university is even close to the top 100 universities in the world. One of the criteria of ranking schools is the internationalization component where Japanese Universities always score very low on. You need to have a large number of outbound Japanese students, inbound foreign students, and inbound foreign graduate students. And it has a lot to do with the school calendar which limits opportunities to go on exchange or student abroad. I believe the school calendar also limits better higher quality students because if they graduate in May/June in the US and have to wait until the following April to attend a Japanese graduate program, they probably will go elsewhere. Now there are some programs in Japan who are starting to allow fall entry but that is still not the norm. Japanese universities are not flexible and the majority like everything to start in April. Basically Japan universities are based and focus on a one year program with two semesters. Very few have the flexibility and actually practice year round entry.

Several years ago, there was a President of Tokyo University who wanted to make the change of the school calendar to September. So on national TV he made the announcement that in five years, Tokyo University would change to a fall start calendar year. People were saying well if Tokyo University is doing it, maybe we should do it also. But there was pushback on very minor and small things, like if the high school students graduate in March, what are they going to do until the following September? There was a huge debate, some called for a gap year or gap 5-months, others said it would be good for students to volunteer and travel, etc. The faculty and administration of Tokyo University seemed to resist and not want the change. Anyway to make a long story short, three months later that same professor came on national TV again and said that he would retract his proposal and that there would be no move to change the school year to September. I believe it was the other Tokyo University faculty that undermined and stonewalled the process as the faculty at Tokyo University are brilliant but very conservative and tunnel visioned and do not want to change anything. Many of Tokyo University faculty are actually against study abroad and exchange as they feel their students come back too “empowered”.

So this Corona Virus situation has given Japan a huge opportunity to change the school year start date and it really is not the cause of anyone. The governors of Tokyo and Osaka and the majority of most governors are for the change of the school year. Prime Minister Abe has not said much but I think he would be for the change as it will provide the start of major lasting change in Japanese society for the future. The naysayers are probably going to be the old guard, the senior management on the big companies who have their systems, dates, paperwork, templates, merchandise and everything dated based on an April start for whatever business or university they are related to. If Japan does not take advantage of this opportunity that is really being given to them on a silver platter, then I really would have very little hope for any type of future societal change in Japan.

I wrote in my last two posts about how difficult it is for Japanese universities to switch over to an online teaching system and also how Japanese companies cannot work remotely due to the lack technological systems and company cultures. And the only reason that many of the universities and companies are trying to make the change now and working really hard on making this happen is that they were forced to from an outside pressure, not from within. And when Japan finally accepts the outside pressure and starts to make the changes, then they go all in and actually can be quite quick to make things happen due to the consensus like implementation within Japanese systems and groups. The biggest factor is always only if the outside pressure can force Japan to open up and accept change, then it can do this very systematically and usually in a timely manner.