Now that the borders are opening, we seem to be getting a lot more questions from people looking at/planning to go to Temple University Japan. And the response from the regulars here is almost always “OH GOD! DON’T DO THAT! It’s a terrible school!”
But what we never really talk about is *why* it’s a terrible school. Some current/former students will occasionally chime in with input, but AFAIK there aren’t really all that many people with experience *hiring* Temple graduates.
At the suggestion of /u/laika_cat, I’m putting this together as someone who actually has some experience hiring Temple graduates. Well, not hiring, actually. *Interviewing* Temple graduates.
First off, some disclaimers:
1. I obviously can’t speak to the quality and/or qualifications of every single student or every single possible major at Temple. But between my experiences, and talking with people in other fields who have also interviewed Temple graduates, I feel like there are some worrying common points.
2. In the interest of not doxing myself I’m not going to say exactly what I do and what positions I’ve interviewed Temple grads for.
3. I have spoken to Temple representatives, both on Reddit and IRL about my concerns. They claim to be attempting to change the things that give the school a bad reputation, but… I haven’t seen it yet.
Now that the disclaimers are out of the way, let’s talk Temple. There are two major issues that plague Temple, both the University as a whole and the Japan campus in particular.
The issues with Temple as an organization are… Well let’s just go with “scandalous”. And recent. And *recurring*.
Where to begin? In 2021 the dean of Temple US’s business school was [convicted of Fraud for trying to illegitimately boost the school’s rankings](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/former-temple-university-business-dean-convicted-fraud-rankings-scheme-rcna7089).
Many posters here are veterans who want to study in Japan using their GI Bill funds. Temple advertises heavily to the military/veteran community, but… In 2020 [the VA moved to suspend GI Bill enrollments at Temple](https://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2020/03/09/department-of-veterans-affairs-moves-to-suspend-new-gi-bill-enrollment-at-temple-university-four-other-schools/). They cited “advertising, sales or enrollment practices that are erroneous, deceptive or misleading.”
While the VA didn’t follow through on the suspension, the reasons were political. Nothing has changed at Temple.
So that’s the less than glorious scoop on Temple University as a whole. But what about Temple Japan?
This is where we get into personal experience. Like I said before, I’m not interested in doxing myself. Getting as close as I can to full disclosure, let’s just say I’m in “Media”. Which means that the graduates I have interacted with are coming out of the Communications Studies major at TUJ.
In the last five years, I have interviewed 13 TUJ students/graduates. 5 of those were students interviewing for an internship position, and the remaining 8 were interviewing for full time professional positions after graduation.
I hired ***none of them***. Zero. All for the exact same reason: Every single one of them showed a *stunning* lack of basic industry knowledge. I’m not talking about high-level specialized skills. Given that TUJ doesn’t have a dedicated program for what I do, a lack of specialization is understandable. No, these students all lacked absolutely basic skills and knowledge. Stuff that would be covered in 100-level “Intro to…” courses.
To use an example from a more commonly-known field, these knowledge gaps were the equivalent of a Computer Science student not knowing the difference between PCI-e and SATA. Or the same CS student not knowing how to install a graphics card driver. I’m talking utterly basic knowledge that a hobbyist in the field would know, much less someone who is theoretically trained in the subject.
The fact that I have seen thirteen TUJ graduates all with a similar lack of knowledge (In a few cases the *same* lack of knowledge, as in they failed the exact same interview question) means that there’s a fundamental failure in education happening. One or two people could be written off as “bad students” or just bad interviews. But ***thirteen***? No. Someone at TUJ is absolutely failing to educate these students.
While my experience is only with Communications Studies majors, I have spoken to people in other industries as well. They have reported a similar (though perhaps not quite as egregious) lack of knowledge in the TUJ students they have interviewed. The majors referenced in those conversations are fairly diverse, including Asian Studies, Political Science, and International Business.
I don’t intend this as a hit-piece on TUJ. Like I said before: I have talked to people at TUJ. I think there’s a lot of benefit to the dual-campus system they offer, and I would love for their students to succeed. But… They’re not. And while the folks I’ve talked to at Temple say they’re trying to make changes I have yet to see any evidence of it. Until those changes actually happen, I feel like prospective students need to be warned about what they’re getting into.
Oh, and if any of the Temple reps see this: No, I’m not particularly interested in “starting a conversation” or whatever you want to call it. Again: Have already started numerous conversations. Not willing to link my Reddit persona to my IRL persona, and any detailed conversations would involve exactly that.
10 comments
Put it in the rules. Seriously.
Rule 12 – Don’t go to Temple University Japan.
I appreciate you taking the time to write this up as I was quite unaware of the reputation of this place, only that it seems to be frequently mentioned as a school people desire to study at in Japan.
I think it’s awesome to study in Japan if you want (and I have), but it’s vital to keep in mind what you want to get out of the experience, especially if it involves a degree.
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I will only say that thousands of students attend Temple each year, and get an excellent education. I realize the Temple’s main campus in Philadelphia and TUJ are connected,but they alsooperate independently in many ways. The two issues you cited (the business school dean and the GI Bill) have—as you noted—absolutely nothing to do with TUJ: the schools are connected, but the issues are not.
Secondly, your hiring experience is certainly meaningful for you and your business, but to me seems far from representative enough for you to malign the entire institution in the way that you have. For someone who doesn’t want to “have a conversation,” writing what you’ve written and then dropping the proverbial mic, as it were, sure comes off like the “hit piece” you claim it not to be.
So you’re writing off an entire university because… umm… you interviewed 13 people and hired none of them? Because they lacked some piece of knowledge specific to your field? Yeah that’s totally fair and convincing…
If students arent even learning such basic things, i only wonder how classes are taught and what sort of assignments/exams theyre given?
I went to a pretty average school in Australia but even there I learned enough that I was able to impress most hiring managers with my knowledge.
Temple is far from great but the OP is clearly on a rant. You refuse to provide your industry or any relevenat info to verify your claims.
Not defending Temple but I am debasing your cliams as slander. Thousands have graduated from Temple they are no better or worse than any other college. Temple actually provides graduate stats and hiring companies. You provide nothing.
2019 graduate of TUJ, Japanese language B.A., chiming in here with my own experiences:
i’ll preface this with saying i don’t work in an industry related to my major, and that my degree and it being from TUJ has almost no impact on what i do currently except for the crippling student loan debt.
but from the experiences i made in Tokyo alone i would make the same decision if given the opportunity to “new game+” life.
many universities offer exchange programs to actually Japanese universities in Japan (even TUJ), so it’s hard for me to recommend TUJ to others unless they want the full 4 years in Tokyo. for me, it was easy enough to get into after boosting my social credit with 2 years in community college, and it gave me a life in Tokyo that i’ll never forget.
**My Goal** (at the time)
i wasn’t concerned about school reputation when i applied; my main goal as a dingus who finished high school with a 1.7 ~ 1.9 GPA and was being pressured from the parents to attend uni was to live in Japan and learn Japanese, and then figure out where to go from there. (for the record i graduated TUJ with a 3.2 GPA, people can change)
**My Major**
i think the Japanese program, while serving brutal amounts of homework, was effective at its goal of teaching Japanese… if you were committed. there were some in my 4th year and capstone classes who still had a thicc American accent in Japanese and i’m not sure how they got so far (i didn’t interact with them, just judging from their speaking ability when responding to questions).
the program takes you up to somewhere in the N2 range, offers classes for JLPT prep/oral communication/reading/kanji, and in the capstone class you’re expected to go out and find volunteer work with an organization of your choosing (which MANY people simply faked since there was no due diligence from the teacher beyond trusting students).
**Compulsory & Optional Classes**
the compulsory classes, such as philosophy (or Mosaics I & II), math, whatever else… those were mostly trash, and i had such a large amount of frustration towards them because they weren’t aligned with my goal of learning Japanese.
i also dabbled in Comm Studies for 2 classes, i forget the name of the class itself but it was basically intro to videography – learn how to take video, make a few projects as a group over the semester, and share them while eating pizza.
for those 2 comm studies classes there were definitely a few people who got it more than others, but it was also pretty much the introduction to everything camera related; exposure triangle, 180 degree shutter rule, lighting & shadow techniques… everything in one semester, with the second being more focused on making projects (iirc). and based on what i saw from some of the other students i can understand how the 13 comm studies majors OP interviewed didn’t make it past interview (nothing against them, i don’t know the full details, and some of my classmates did end up switching majors).
**Post Graduation**
in the final semester, if you want to continue living in Japan on a “job hunting visa” you’re told to apply for at least 3 jobs (any field) a month until graduation, this will let you apply for a 6 month extension on your gaijin card so you can continue job hunting. i’ll be honest and say that i applied to the bare minimum requirement with no intention of interviewing during that final semester because i didn’t want to screw up my grades and chances of graduating.
i actually had 2 successful interviews during my extension period, but i don’t think my success in them was at all related to the university name.
one job was a 未経験者IT role that was only asking for N1 Japanese (definitely wasn’t N1 level at the time), where they would allegedly train you up in 3 months to do some kind of programming and then dispatch you to other companies (i ended up backing out because it felt a bit shady and i was uncertain about what i would be used for).
the other was a retail position at JINS, but they were being highly unhelpful about giving me the required documents for applying for a proper work visa.
**Summary**
i accepted long ago that my degree in Japanese from TUJ is probably worthless except for allowing me back into Japan – i went to a coding boot camp after graduation, left that when i realized their CS program was poo poo, and i now work in web development waiting for the borders to open to tourists.
edit 1: formatting
All i know about Temple is that it was advertised to the students in my high school japanese class with posters, and later when i worked at a japanese cultural promotion office in the US, they helped sponsor several of our events.
I am a cs masters and I have no clue what the difference is between PCI e and SATA is beyond the fact that they are cables for two different parts of a pc lol 😩😩