Abstract
Japanese colleges and university are facing an enrollment crisis unparalleled in their history. The main reason for the crisis is that a population bulge has passed from school age to working age, and the 18-year old population is decreasing by 25%. Interestingly, the same situation existed in America in the late seventies. In the US case, however, as the demographic bulge passed into the workplace, a large number of adults began returning to school, causing an adult education boom. Extensive research has been done on why the adults returned, and the purpose of this paper is to comapre those factors, of both a causal and a facilitating nature, to the current conditions in Japan, whereby it might be possible to predict whether a similar boom will occur here. Leading indicators suggest that it will. Changes in Japan’s demographic structure, economy, industrial organization and educational system suggest that a large number of Japanese adults might return to school to build skills.
THE COMING EDUCATION BOOM IN JAPAN
The Decrease in College Applicants
Enrollments are the lifeblood of any institution. The number of students that apply represents both the financial capital available to the institution and its reputation. What makes increases or decreases in applicants even more frightening is their tendency to be self-perpetutating. A school with an increasing number of applicants will have greater resources, better students, and gain a higher reputation, resulting in more applications in the future. A school with a decrease in applicants will suffer the opposite.
Therefore, there is no other need as critical to a college as getting applicants, and the need is addressed in many ways. Schools expend considerable resources to advertise, to evaluate student “satisfaction,” and to maintain the school’s integrity (by pressuring faculty to publish). What schools often do not consider, however, is how the age distribution of the population influences the number of students that apply. Until recently, most administrators made policies as if the populations they drew from were a constant. They are not. They pulsate, and recent changes in Japanese demographics are having a heavy impact on schools.
Figure 1, based on information from the Statistics Bureau (1996, p, 21) shows changes in the Japanese population. Unlike the United States, which had one long baby boom after the war, Japan has experienced two: one right after the war, from 1947 to 1949, and one twenty-five years later, from 1971 to 1974 (Bureau of Statistics, 1996). The second boom occurred because the post-war boom cohort hit their mid-twenties – the most common age to have children – at the same time Japan became an economic superpower. In 1968, Japan surpassed the Federal Republic of Germany to become the world’s second largest GNP (JIN, 1997). The combination of the good economic conditions and the size of the cohort in their twenties caused the second baby boom to be even larger than the first. Then, from 1974, began a sharp decline in the number of births that has continued until last year.
Figure 1. Japanese population demographics show the decrease in 18-year olds.
The effects of the decline are now being felt by colleges. From 1988 until 2003 there will be a 25% decrease in the number of eighteen-year olds (Bureau of Statistics, 1996), and thus a sharp decrease in that vital requirement, the number of applicants. Whereas some of the decrease has been offset by a greater percentage of the population going to college, a five percent increase to 43.3% in 1994, schools are still suffering fewer enrollments (Monbusho, 1996). This is especially true for two year junior colleges, a large proportion of whose enrollments consist of students who were not accepted into four year schools. Not only are there fewer jukensei for junior colleges to recruit from, but they are also suffering from a change in attitudes towards two year schools, and the Monbusho’s “third great reform,” (Kelly, 1998, p. 25) in which the Monbusho has become more tolerant of free market competition between schools. According to a secret unpublished survey made by a recruiting firm, in 1997, the average number of applicants to major junior college English departments in Kansai decreased about 30%. The situation for rural or less well-known junior colleges is even worse, and some have closed their doors for good.
Predictions for the future.
Indeed, the situation is grim, and with the current economic
crisis, it is likely the situation will get even worse in the future. So how will Japan fare in the next
decade? Read
the prediction below. Although the references are purposely being withheld,
rest assured that the prediction was made on the basis of sound analysis:
Adding together the demographic projection and the declining rate of return, assuming that college students are economical men and women responding to the labor market, enrollment projections come out in the vicinity of minus 40%.
A 40% decrease. The situation is more dire than expected. If this prediction is accurate, half of
Japan’s colleges and universities will have to face the possibility of
bankruptcy. Except, there is
surprise woven into this statement.
It is not a prediction about how Japanese colleges will fare in the next
decade, it was a predition made in 1979 about how US colleges would fare during
the eighties (Kerr, p.2 – the deleted reference). Interestingly, the United States has a
population curve almost opposite that of Japan. While Japan was experiencing a baby boom in the sixties,
America was in a “baby bust” (Cross, 1981, p.3), and so, it was calculated that between 1979 and 1992, US colleges
would also have 25% fewer eighteen-year olds to draw upon. In the seventies, they had
already suffered a 16% decrease in a situation almost identical to
Japan’s, and things were expected to get worse.
However, the prediction was wrong,
amazingly wrong. Rather than
enrollments decreasing by 40% in the eighties, they increased drastically. From 1972 to 1994, university
enrollments went up an astounding 36%.
Two-year colleges, which were initially expected to suffer the most, did
even better. Their enrollments
almost doubled, going from 2.8 million in 1972 to 5.5 million in 1994 (Jones,
1997).
How could the American forecasters have
been so mistaken? The answer lies
in their inability to predict an educational boom that was about to come. During the eighties and nineties, a
huge number of adults would flock back to school. The number has been so large, in fact, that it has done more
than just compensate for the missing 18-year olds. Students over 22 outnumber those under. Even by 1986, over 30% of the
students in higher education were 25 or older (Parnell, 1990), which is the
most commonly accepted definition of “adult student” and now, according to on-line data
posted by the National Center for Educational Statistics, adults comprise 43.5% of all part-time and full-time
students in American colleges (NCES, 1997). Overall, it has been
estimated that America has about 590,000 adult educators of all types
(1996-97 issue of The Occupational Outlook Handbook, as cited in Grissom, 1997, p. 4) which, by
comparison, is about double the total number of full-time and part-time faculty
in Japanese colleges (Bureau of Statistics,
1996, p. 86).
And yet, the return of adults to
American colleges is not just a lucky twist of fate. Nor can it be assumed that it is a uniquely American
phenomenon. Theories of population
demographics suggest that first, the return of adults to college was directly
related to to the same factors that caused the panic in the first place, the
decrease in eighteen-year olds; and second, there are strong indications that a
similar trend is about to occur in Japan.
The Effects of Booms and Busts on Enrollments
How can a decrease in traditional
students be related to an increase in non-traditional ones? The answer lies in what happens when a
population bulge passes from school to the workplace (see Figure 2). When the bulge is at the college age,
universities prosper and expand, while companies pay higher premiums for a
smaller workforce. When the bulge
gets older, however, colleges experience a decrease in enrollments and
companies have a surplus of workers to draw from. With more people competing for a relatively fixed number of
jobs, jobs are harder to get and promotions come more slowly. As a result, the adults of this cohort
are more likely to pursue further study to improve their career
opportunities. Generally, workers
at the lower end of the pay scale seek training to get new jobs, while workers
at the higher end seek training to get promoted within their existing jobs (Merriam & Caffarella, 1991).
Figure 2. Employment
pressures when a population bulge moves.
Employment pressures are not the only
reasons adults return to school; in a sense, these adults have been socialized
to compete. Whenever there is a
bulge in a population, it puts a strain on resources. The members of a large cohort must bear the curse of their
numbers throughout their whole lives.
According to Richard Easterlin (Cross, 1981), a University of Pennsylvania
demographics expert, the US baby boom – the bulge of 83 million Americans
born between 1945 and 1966 (Hudson Institute, 1997) – was not only responsible for
overcrowding of US schools, but also for the higher rates of crime in the
sixties and seventies. Most crimes
are committed by youth aged 14 to 25.
The bulge also explains the thirty year shift in US marketing from baby
foods to pop records to recreational vehicles, and even for the baby bust that
followed. As the glut of boomers
hit the workplace, they found fewer jobs and than their predecessors. The
harder economic times they faced caused them to marry less and have fewer
children, causing the baby bust that followed. Later, these same psychological factors caused their
offspring, the busters, to have more children, which explains why populations
pulsate rather than remain constant (Cross, 1981).
In any case, the hard economic times the US baby boomers experienced in
the eighties caused them to seek further training to aid their careers. Thus, instead of halving in the
eighties, college enrollments also doubled. Extensive research on reasons adults participate in higher
education (summarized in Brookfield,
1986; Cross, 1981; Merriam & Caffarella, 1991; Rogers, 1986) supports this view. For
example, NCES surveys in 1984 found that 64% of adults study for job-related
reasons (Merriam
& Caffarella, 1991, p. 81).
The Coming Educational Boom in Japan
As mentioned earlier, Japan has had a
second baby boom that makes its demographic curve is almost opposite that of the US.[1] One cannot help wonder, then, if
Japan might not also be on the brink of an adult education boom. In fact, leading indicators suggest
that this is exactly the case.
Extensive information exists on the situation that led to the US boom,
and a similar situation exists in Japan. In fact, the
conditions in Japan today are more than just similar to those in America in the
seventies. In many ways, they
exceed those conditions.
The conditions can be classified into
two types: (1) those that caused the boom, such as the demographic bulge; and
(2) those that had no causal influence, but eased (or blocked) its progression,
such as attitudes towards education.
The first shall be referred to as causal factors and the second as facilitating factors. There
are five causal and five facilitating factors (see Table 1). Of these, the causal factors are more
significant, since direct relationships have been delineated in previous
research (Cross,
1981; Knowles, 1990; Merriam & Caffarella, 1991; Rogers, 1986). As for the facilitating
factors, their power is less certain.
Until further study can be done, they are speculative, but it would be a
mistake to dismiss them on that basis.
Both causal and facilitating factors will be discussed below, but rather
than consider them separately, it is more meaningful to group them.
Table 1.
Causal and
Facilitating Factors for an Adult Education Boom
|
Causal
Factors |
Facilitating
Factors |
|
1. the demographic bulge 2. employment conditions 3. new logic corporations 4. higher levels of prior education 5. individual wealth |
1. societal level of wealth 2. educational infrastructure 3. attitudes towards education 4. predominant pedagogy 5. governmental legislation |
Comparing Demographic and Economic Factors
The first two causal factors, and
probably the most important, the shift of the population bulge from school to
the workplace and resulting employment conditions, have already been
described. Demographic figures for
Japan show that the situation now is remarkably similar to that in the US in
the late seventies. Japanese newspapers
write constantly about the difficulties securing employment recent graduates
face and their attempt to resolve the problem by becoming furii baitaa (mobile, part-time employees). Concurrent with the glut of workers seeking
employment, a second phenomenon has occurred to augment their
difficulties. Japan is facing a
severe recession as a result of the on-going economic crisis in Asia.
It must be added, however, that the
“employment” difficulties Americans faced in the eighties were not
just a result of “economic” difficulties. In fact, the contrary seems to be true as well. American industry experienced economic
prosperity in the eighties that had been unparalleled previously (Pilzer, 1990). Change causes dislocation
and insecurity, even when it is change for the better. The change in American industry,
and the prosperity of the eighties, was related to a major change in the way
business was conducted. US
companies faced greater competition than ever before, fo rmany, ironically,
from Japan, and this competitionled to an extended period of transformation
from older hierarchical organizations to newer, flatter organizations (Bolman & Deal, 1997; Bridges,
1996; Handy, 1996; Lawler, 1996). Lawler writes:
Corporate downsizing and reengineering became popular in the 1980’s... A recent interview I had with the CEO of a major corporation underscores just how powerful the culture of downsizing has become. He had just returned from a retreat where many Fortune 500 CEOs were present and said that the major topic of conversation was how much more downsizing was possible (1996, p. 259).
Prior to the trend, the general belief
in America was that if you worked for a major company, such as a Fortune 500
company, and showed up for work everyday, your job was safe. The tumultuous eighties and nineties
changed this. “Large
corporations are laying off tens of thousands of employees at a time and
temporary employment agencies are growing more rapidly any other
business” (p.267). As a
result, a new kind of worker has emerged, one who manages his or her own
skill-based career. For these
workers, company loyalty has been traded for high performance. Although a job might end, one’s
acquired skills do not, and they can be marketed. How do such individuals manage their skill-based
careers? “One obvious answer
is to take the continuing-education courses offered by professional
associations, universities, or other groups” (p. 271). Therefore, a major reason American
adults returned to school in the eighties was to build skill-based careers once
loyalty no longer mattered.
Is the same trend occurring in Japan? Japanese concepts of company loyalty are more deeply imbedded, and Japanese organizational structures tend to be more rigid hierarchially. The notion of an Japanese employee marketing his or her skills was imponderable twenty years ago. After all, this was supposedly an American, not Japanese, characteristic. And yet, according to recent data, two differences that had been highly vaunted in the past, Japanese corporate loyalty and the hard work ethic, have recently become suspect. It is predicted that the number of hours per annum that Japanese work will decrease from 2100 hours in 1992 to 1800 hours by 2000 (Maruo, 1995) and it was found in the "National Survey of Lifestyle Preferences" that far more 20-year olds believe it is acceptable to change companies than 50-year olds (Japan, 1995). These figures, in combination with the flurry of newspaper articles on head-hunting, job-hopping, and the growth of temporary work firms, indicate that Japan is not at all immune to such a trend.
In fact, the current economic crisis will probably help catalyze it. The current crisis is surprisingly similar to the economic recessions America faced at the end of the seventies, and it was these recessions that promulgated the downsizing trend and the emergence of “new logic” organizations (Lawler, 1996). It is not hard to predict that the same will occur in Japan. To survive the current crisis, many employee-heavy Japanese corporations must either reorganize or go out of business. Whether they do so or not, once job security becomes tenuous, as a result of bankruptcies or reengineerings, we can assume that a new breed of mobile skill-based workers will emerge in this country as well, and they will seek skills-related education.
Two other factors responsible for the new logic organization have also had a direct impact on the American adult education boom. The first is the shift from primary and secondary to a tertiary level of industry, and the second is the globalization of the economy.
In the last thirty years, American industry made a dramatic shift from primary and secondary levels (agriculture, mining, construction, manufacturing, etc.) to tertiary levels (services, finance, information, etc.). Obviously, work of greater complexity requires a higher level of expertise. Vocational training in America, done either independently or in conjunction with the university system, grew during the postwar years to include somewhere between 10 and 30 percent of the work force (Stubblefield & Keane, 1994). However, it was not evenly distributed. Large companies and high tech companies were more likely than other companies to offer their offer workers free education, which shows the close relationship between technological levels and the need for education. In most organizations today, technological levels have risen so quickly that even bottom level workers need sophisticated skills (Hudson Institute, 1997). Furthermore, information is becoming obsolete almost as soon as it is published (Helgesen, 1996). In the new logic organization, just “having” a good education will not suffice. One’s education must be constantly renewed as well, in order to keep practices up to date. For this reason, new logic organizations are also referred to as “learning organizations” (Senge, 1996) and many are establishing links with universities (Bolman & Deal, 1997) as in the Saturn - University of Tennessee link.
Related to this trend is another, the globalization of the economy. As markets become less and less protected, a company is more likely to have new competitors from abroad, but is company is likely to have more opportunities abroad as well. In the global economy, the requirements for success have changed drastically. Whereas once, in sheltered markets, the availability of resources and cheap labor determined success, in the global market, success depends largely on how quickly a company can discern or create a market and bring it products. The key commodity in today’s business is information (Pilzer, 1990), and information is the business of education.
Obviously, Japan, one of the major benefactors of globalization, is also subject to its pressures. It is no coincidence that systems like total quality management and “just in time” production were first applied in Japan. As for tertiary levels of industry, Japan has also experienced a drastic change. In 1995, approximately 60% of the Japanese work force was employed in tertiary industry, as compared to 70% in the US (Bureau of Statistics, 1996, p.29). Industrial levels, however, are not necessarily the best indicator of how advanced industry is. Japan is on par with, and possibly more high tech than the United States. According to U.N. data, Japan leads in equipment production in a number of high tech areas, such as televisions, watches, and compressors (Bureau of Statistics, 1996, p. 63).
Maybe the best indicator to show the similarities of US and Japanese industries is GDP. In 1968, Japan became an economic power second only to America, but due to a 30-year economic boom, Japan’s capita income surpassed that of Britain in 1972 and that of America in 1987 (The Economic Planning Agency, 1995). Current figures are less clear, due to the Asian economic crisis and rapidly fluctuating exchange rates, but obviouisly, the requirement of general societal wealth as a facilitating factor, is met.
Therefore, at least in relation to industry and economic pressures, we can see solid leading indicators that suggest that Japan is experiencing the same conditions that led to the American adult education boom. In fact, in many ways, the conditions in Japan surpass those that existed in America.
Comparing Education-Related Factors
In regard to the fourth causal factor, education, Cross (1981) points out that research has repeatedly shown a strong positive relationship between the prior level of education and returning to school. American educational levels rose rapidly in the last forty years as a result of television (Stubblefield & Keane, 1994) – a highly underrated source of education – and greater access to educational institutions. Apparently, having gone to school makes one more likely to go back. So, as the general level of education in the US rose, so did the number of adults returning to campus.
It must be added, however, that Brookfield (1986) has examined the same data and suggested a different interpretation, one related to the fifth causal factor. Although the prior level of education is statistically well-correlated with the tendency to return to school, so is wealth. In other words, since adults with higher levels of education were also wealthier, they are more likely to return to school because they can afford it. Whatever the case, both wealth and educational levels have risen dramatically in the US in the last thirty years (Hudson Institute, 1997; Parnell, 1990) and represent a double paradox. It appears that for adults to seek further education,they must already be educated, and for them to choose this particular response to financial pressures, they must already be financially solvent.
So how does Japan compare on the
wealth-education scale? Once
again, conditions related to the causal factors in Japan exceed those in the
US. As mentioned earlier, Japanese
per capita wealth surpassed that of the US in 1987, showing a high level of
both individual and societal wealth.
In terms of education, the Japanese rate of literacy is 99%, one of the
highest in the world (State
Department, 1995), with more televisions per household, and a per capita newspaper
circulation almost double that of the United States (Bureau of Statistics, 1996). Also surpassing the US
are high school completion rates, which stand at about 90% (State Department, 1995).
Parallels in post-secondary education are also striking. US and Japanese educational systems are identical, at least on the surface (Kelly, 1992) and of all the developing countries, these two countries alone have colleges and universities numbering in the thousands (Monbusho, 1996). They also lead the world in the number of youth going to college, both over 40%.
As for facilitating factors, the potential is less clear. The educational infrastructure exists; Japan has over a thousand colleges and university campuses (Monbusho, 1996) and over 20,000 potential social education facilities, such as community halls, libraries, etc. (Bureau of Statistics, 1996, p. 146). Nonetheless, admission systems have traditionally been rigid; college is a place for blossoming youth, not world-wise workers. This attitude can be seen in the low number of adults in Japanese universities. Although figures on the exact number of adult students are ambiguous, but it can be assumed that since part-time programs during the day are rare, most attend at night; and since of all Japanese college students, only 5% are attending at night (Bureau of Statistics, 1996, p. 74), of which, probably only half are adult, it can be inferred that adult participation is still quite low.
However, in what the Monbusho claims is the greatest reform of education since World War II (Monbusho, 1995), they are sending clear directives that support adult education. In 1991, the Monbusho published new guidelines (article 31) that allow schools to accept part-time and adult students (Simmons, Yonally & Shiozawa, 1996). In addition, schools are given far greater autonomy in planning their own curricula; financial rewards are offered to schools that set up international programs, volunteer work programs, or programs in which empty classrooms are used for community education (Monbusho, 1994); and a Lifelong Education Act has been passed similar to the US legislation in the mid-seventies, which had such a significant effect on promulgating adult education.
How effective the Ministry’s directives will be, and how soon, depends a great deal on two factors. The first is the ability of Japanese colleges to implement reform. Reforms are desperately needed and are frequently called for by the media, and now that a number of schools are facing financial crises, it is hard to imagine that these schools not paying particular attention to market demand. However, even a cursory examination of the historical record makes the picture look bleak (Fujita, 1993; Horio & Platzer, 1988; Rubinger, 1993). Japanese colleges have a built-in aversion to change, in what some call the “ivory tower” syndrome, and often, even when philosophical blocks can be overcome, bureaucratic blocks cannot (Simmons, Yonally, & Shiozawa, 1995). However, the same was once said about Japanese businesses in the post-war years, and although few reformed, many old-style companies went out of business and were replaced by modern organizational structures. Maybe now that the Monbusho is unofficially experimenting with free market competition between schools, and schools are facing economic problems similar to those that postwar businesses faced, the same evolutionary processes will occur in education as well. If so, then the current economic and enrollee crises might be a boon for educational consumers.
The second factor involves pedagogy. One of the lessons learned in the US shift to adult education is that adults cannot study the same way youth do. Until the lesson was learned, adult attrition rates of 50% were common (Knowles, 1990). However, adult learning styles are well-documented (Cross, 1981; Knox, 1986; Merriam & Caffarella, 1991), and a humanistic adult-oriented pedagogy has emerged: andragogy (Knowles, 1980). Basically, adults need to be self-directing, need to organize their studies around life-centered topics, and need to utilize their life experiences. Unfortunately, such an approach is almost opposite to the dominant pedagogy in Japan, where learners are completely dependent on the sensei. It is questionable as to whether Japanese college faculty will be successful in adopting andragogical approaches in which they must facilitate rather than teach. However, although traditional pedagogical approaches were repugnant to American adults, they might be more acceptable to Japanese, who, being less individualistic, tend to be more tolerant of vertical hierarchy.
And yet, one of Japan’s greatest writers, Natsume Soseki, was also one of Japan’s first adult students. Following his ryugaku studies in England, he often espoused ideas similar to andragogical tenets, such as, “Gojin wa Keiken yori shuttatsu su, Keiken wa gojin chishiki zairyo ni shite, arayuru Housoku no naiyo nari” (Soseki, 1976, p. 20). In rough translation: “For me, all departures start from experience, and as far as my knowledge goes, the rules of the universe come from experience.” It might be that the Japanese emphasis on teacher-centeredness exists merely because adult education has not yet been formalized here. As more Japanese educators have educational experiences like Soseki’s, newer pedagogies might emerge here as well.
After all, the Japanese have long placed a very high value on education. Education has been recognized as the primary determinant of later financial and social success (Van Wolferen, 1990), which is why household expenditures on supplementary education, including "Juku" schools, has risen from 5.1% in 1960 to 25.4% in 1994 (Japan, 1995). However, education here is more than that. It is the Japanese window on the world; it is the provider of counterculture (Kelly, 1992); and for the Japanese individual, it is a Rogerian “way of being” (Rogers, 1980). Japanese adults have long had a strong affinity with education, whether it is offered formally or not, and despite pedagogical limitations, as more opportunities appear, it is likely that more adults will participate.
A Possible Second Educational Boom
Some other intriguing demographic data
suggests the possibility of another kind of boom, one that did not occur in
America in the seventies.
The adult education boom in America occurred primarily with the working
population, and the same will probably happen here as well. A second boom, though, might also take
place with retirees.
As was discussed earlier, prior education is a strong predictor for participating in further education later. Few Japanese, however, attended college until 1948, after which participation rates soared. In the two-year period between 1948 and 1950, enrollments went from 12,000 to 240,000, a twentyfold increase. By assuming these students averaged twenty years old, and calculating the particular years they will reach the retirement age of 65, it appears that from now on, the number of Japanese retirees with a college education will increase dramatically (see Figure 3). In fact, there will be a hundred times as many college-educated Japanese retiring in 2015 as in 1993.
Figure 3. The number of Japanese college
graduates who will be reaching 65, retirement age, within the next three
decades.
Overall, Japan's population is aging at a pace without parallel in any other country. “In October 1992, 13.5% of Japan's population was aged 65 or older, but the Institute of Population Problems of the Ministry of Health and Welfare estimates that people 65 or older will constitute 25.8% of the population in 2025“ (Monbusho, 1997). Since most of Japan’s elderly are affluent, urban, and may not have much else to do, and as the proportion of this population with prior education increases, Japan might also see a “silver” education boom of such mammoth proportions that the West’s Elderhostel and 3rd Age university programs might pale in comparison. In fact, indicators from at least one suburban community, Takatsuki in Osaka, show that this is precisely what is happening (Kelly, 1998). English classes for senior citizens are so overburdened with applicants that a three term mandatory “graduation” rule has been put into effect.
Conclusion
In conclusion, by examining the causal factors for the American adult education boom in the seventies, we can see that Japan is more than ripe for its own. Decreasing applicants and goverment legislation will influence schools to tap into the adult market. Meanwhile, as industry becomes more advanced, delves deeper into the global market, and adopts new logic systems, employers need workers with higher and higher levels of skill. As for the employees themselves, these changes in industry, their unwieldy numbers, and the current economic crisis is creating tough times for them, much like those that Americans in the seventies faced. As Japanese workers become more willing to change jobs and market skills rather than rely on loyalty, they will go back to school for skills training. These factors, of apparently even larger magnitude than those in America in the seventies, will create a strong impetus for adult education in Japan. The impetus might even be further strengthened by a secondary force. As Japan grays, these educated older Japanese might go back to school as well. The power of this movement will be strong, probably even strong enough to overcome attitudinal or bureaucratic blocks. In fact, the movement is likely to change the educational landscape of Japan, much like it did in America. A great opportunity exists for those schools that take advantage of it.
In short, there are strong indicators that Japan is on the verge of an educational boom: the return of adults to the classroom.