3. Rebuilding Japan's international competitiveness and acquiring global human resources
3.4 Policy Recommendations
supplying global human resources and may need to appeal to the business community about their curriculum reform, as well as make efforts to hold dialogues with the business community, considering the shaping of careers for their students to be synonymous with the generation of their own assets.
Even if students find employment once after completing their undergraduate program, they often find the need for graduate level education due to business reasons or for personal career development. Many companies enhanced their training and education systems during the bubble, resulting in an increase in the number of employees sent overseas by their companies for MBA programs. However, it is said that the number of Japanese, including businessmen, studying at top- class graduate schools in the United States has declined in recent years. Since it is believed that there is a large potential demand for opportunities to receive graduate-level education while working, not necessarily overseas, it can be said that, in terms of developing global human resources, it is indispensable for graduate schools to work on the recurrent education of Japanese employees.
of the communication abilities of service staff who provide assistance with visas, etc., preparation of English language information not only on classes but also to the necessities of life on campus (including earthquake and other disaster-related information), and enhancement of websites. Costs that are not required by universities of English speaking countries are also incurred, such as the cost of sending faculty members to universities in the United Kingdom or the United States under faculty development programs in order to improve the quality of courses offered by those whose first language is not English. It can be said that government support has played a big enough role that globalization efforts have accelerated, as exemplified by Tokyo University raising the question of admitting students in September. In addition to research work conducted by faculty members, which are taken into consideration as a matter of course, globalization measures, including the presence of foreign students and faculty members, is one important factor that is taken into account in world university rankings. If a favorable rating cannot be obtained and the ranking drops, it will become even harder to secure global human resources. There is enormous significance in realizing support of a level comparable to that of other OECD countries, and universities must not cease to work on the business community, the government and even the Japanese public through the efficient use of funding and dissemination of information their positive achievements.
(2) Preparation of a road map and mutual check on progress in reform through industry-government- academia dialogues: It is clear also from the numerous reports previously cited that the sense of crisis on the lack of global human resources is shared by many. There is now a consensus with each report stressing the need for dialogues and collaboration between the business community and academia. However, there is a notable structural difference between companies that are able to make drastic changes to the allocation of business resources and universities that cannot.
Furthermore, it will take a long time before the experiences accumulated by the students will be recognized as fruits of the reform through their social success. It will be difficult to ensure steady progress in a time-consuming reform merely through temporary reflection of concerns regarding declining competitiveness on the budgets of individual government offices.
It may not be possible to secure global human resources at the pace the Japanese market is hoping without efforts that would at least involve the preparation of a road map by the business community and academia, and a process involving the government, business community and academia through which the progress and consistency of the reform are checked every year. The pushing back of recruitment by companies and the admission of students in September are no more than strategy-level adjustments. More urgently needed are dialogues concerning the details of
education and environment. There are significant setbacks to attempts to achieve U.K./U.S.-type development from the beginning and, assuming that competition with South Korea and China has already begun, it seems that working out a Japanese-style combination type market value through the aforementioned check system is more realistic in the current situation than endeavoring for the German type.
(3) Promotion of mobility of human resources among business community, government and academia: Lastly, the business community points out that flexibly addressing completely different environments and situations is one condition for the globalization of human resources. Certain levels of contribution may indeed be expected from education, particularly liberal arts education and the broadening of horizons, on the university and graduate school levels. Naturally, such abilities to address differences cannot be developed only within the school environment, and therefore there is a large significance to the provision of various opportunities to acquire experience. Although the impact of bringing in foreign students is far smaller than going abroad to study, it still provides the meaningful experience of studying in a cross-cultural environment.
Given that many awaken to the desire to study abroad as a result of this experience, there is a need to establish a career path that will lead from the study abroad to internship at a domestic or an overseas company, and opportunities to go overseas after employment on business trips or assignment while still young. Of importance are the opportunities for diverse experiences suitable for the relevant area of specialty in the course of the career path, and increasing the mobility of human resources among the business community, government and academia will be highly meaningful in this respect. The inability to send people to positions within international organizations has long been a disadvantage for Japan. It will also be helpful to provide support that will allow universities, companies and the government to send people out to international organizations or establish a system where temporary assignments or transfers among the business community, government and academia will not adversely affect the relevant individuals. While the unemployment rate is high, a society consisting mainly of generalists lacks specialists in a wide variety of areas, not only in the business community but also policy making entities and academia, to where it almost seems like an exception to the rule among developed countries. It appears that there is a need to compensate for the shortage of specialists by promoting mobility for the time being and work towards a next generation of global human resources.
Conclusion
Subordination of Japanese companies in the global competition has been prominent in recent years, with the quantitative and qualitative deficiency of global human resources being loudly declared as the cause. This is attributable to the failure of Japanese companies to adapt to the rapidly progressing global competition on both the business management and the technology fronts. On the other hand, the astounding advancement of Korean companies is due mainly to the establishment of a business management system of rapidly combining together the necessary human resources, cash, goods and technologies without adhering to the concept of procuring everything internally. Further, China has been strengthening its proprietary technologies through a combination of its enormous market and quantitative and qualitative improvement in engineering human resources. Unless the industry- government-academia framework is re-established with a clear idea of the extent to which global human resources are to be developed within Japan and to what extent they are going to be sought efficiently from around the world, Japan's competitive position will continue to deteriorate. Japan will not be able to avoid conducting a review of the overall framework, since business management must be renovated suitably for Japanese companies in order to take on Korea’s challenge, and the technology strategy must be re-examined in order to counter China's challenge.
As it transitions towards diversity management, an urgent task of the business community is to accord global human resources appropriate treatment and develop global human resources jointly with academia. Meanwhile, academia must depart from standardization to allow the various universities to revise their own curriculum to address complex social needs, promote globalization with respect to both research and education, and proceed further with the reform of graduate schools, including reinforcement of recurrent education. The review of the industry-government-academia framework being a long-term project, it is necessary for the government to continue to ensure and expand investment in human resources, have the business community and academia continue to engage patiently in dialogues and prepare a road map for the reform, and provide a venue for checking the progress in reform efforts.
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－Notes－