Japan’s plan to kickstart sciences seen as threat to humanities

Academics fear that Japan’s multibillion-yen drive to open new science departments will further marginalise the arts and humanities.

Tokyo’s ¥300 billion (£1.7 billion) fund will support universities and technical colleges planning to create new science departments or to expand existing ones, in a bid to increase the number of graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.

In contrast to Japan’s other big funding programme – its ¥10 trillion excellence initiative, which will be distributed among just a few top-tier institutions – the STEM fund will be shared among 111 institutions, including smaller regional and private institutions, which tend to focus on lower-cost humanities and social sciences. According to reports, institutions will receive up to ¥2 billion in funding over a period of up to seven years.

Some academics have hailed the investment, but many have voiced concern about the potential unintended side-effects.

Akiyoshi Yonezawa, vice-director of the international strategy office at Tohoku University, said that while the support scheme had been “positively accepted” by university administrators, it had received a less enthusiastic reception from academics in the humanities and social sciences.

He said these scholars – especially early career researchers – could face fewer career opportunities and less job security, even as their STEM colleagues saw their horizons expand.

“In a relatively closed academic labour market…this may cause significant damage to the long-term development of the academic profession and research,” he said.

Professor Yonezawa worried that the incentive would cause Japanese institutions to prioritise the sciences at the cost of non-STEM fields that are already under pressure to meet the “urgent challenge” of becoming “more engaged with society, more open, more interdisciplinary”.

He also wondered whether the scheme would succeed in getting universities to “pursue this transformation [of STEM] with a long-term vision”.

Masami Iwata, a sociologist and emeritus professor at Japan Women’s University, shared the concern.

“I think it will only encourage short-term success in the IT sector,” she said. “Restructuring of faculties and graduate schools will probably occur, which may lead to a restructuring of current university teaching staff, not to mention the recruitment of younger people.”

With the government expecting a shortfall of 790,000 workers in IT by 2030, an emphasis on restructuring the higher education sector made sense, said Akira Arimoto, emeritus professor of education at Hiroshima University.

“In this context, favourable winds necessarily blow for the new candidate[s] in STEM and, on the other hand, unfavourable winds for those in [humanities and social sciences],” he said.

Professor Arimoto cautioned that the plan would succeed only if it was adopted in both name and spirit.

“I am afraid it might be realised by changing names of faculties and departments for the private sector’s survival without substantial development,” he said, noting that many private institutions had, in recent years, rebadged faculties and departments to incorporate more fashionable terms such as “environment” and “international” in an attempt to survive amid dropping enrolment.

Others were more upbeat. Akira Mori, a scholar at the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo, hailed the initiative as “great news” from a sciences perspective, especially as what he described as a lack of support for STEM had contributed to the Japanese economy’s “long-term decline”.

Still, Professor Mori admitted to being wary about the knock-on effects of the initiative for his non-STEM colleagues.

“It is crucial to ensure multiple avenues of assistance to support different fields, including creating more academic positions for humanities and social sciences,” he said.

pola.lem@timeshighereducation.com