Looking into some desperate little student faces, once again I am wondering about the (extreme? ridiculous?) number of classes students have to take at university. I met one student who’s taking 25 classes this semester. I took 5-7 per year or so and feel perfectly educated… They are stressed and stretched out, have no time, but at the same time can’t really “study” imho… Does anybody know the reasoning behind this? What are your opinions on it? Am I overlooking some genius didactic planning?
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What counts for a “class” in Japan is not equal to what we consider a class in western university systems. The student you met who has 25 classes is not taking the equivalent of 75 units at an American university, for example. I’m not sure what department your student is studying in, but all of my university students, including the medical students (at least in their first few years) have plenty of time to relax, socialize, do their hobbies, and travel. Japanese university is, in general, a lot easier than western university. It makes up for the hell they go through in junior high and high school.
In Japan, the more the better. Quantity over quality when it comes to education
Once they are in they basically cant fail in most cases. However, i think stress is a related to understanding and the biggest issue is that university students in Japan are not taught to understand a topic, but rather told about it, and expected to internalise it themselves.
Current uni student here. I have to take 124 to graduate my program, each year we are expected to take around 40-46 credits. Except for the last one. Each course is 2 credits if it’s a whole semester long, if it’s just a quarter then it’s only a single credit. As a second year I’m taking 12-14 classes at a time. The program Im enrolled into is not in English, just a regular Japanese one. Hope this gives you a bit more insight
It varies by major, but the basic MEXT requirement is that students need 124 credits for an undergraduate degree. Again it varies by subject, etc., but most university courses are two credits, so most students take around 62 to 65 classes total. If you divide that by eight semesters (two per year for four years), students should be taking between 7 and 8 courses per semester and spend about 12 hours per week in class. A pretty similar number to many western institutions.
However, for the last 30 years or so (after the bubble popped), job hunting will take the majority of a student’s time in their last 3 semesters. Companies will schedule interviews, internships, various kinds of training and trialing exercises during school hours making it impossible for students to attend class. So, instead of spreading a degree over 8 semesters, students are forced to take the majority of their credits in 5 semesters. Do the math that way, and you get students taking between 12 and 13 classes per term–nearly twice the course load they should have. To further complicate things, many students are advised to take as many classes as they can in their first two semesters (just in case they need more time for job hunting) so many students end up with more like 14 or 15 classes per term in their first year.
Your student said 25 classes? That doesn’t sound right to me. That would be 1st through 5th, Monday through Friday. That’s an impossible schedule. Are you sure they didn’t mean 25 credits? Which would be something more like 12 or 13 classes, which sounds about right.
On a side note, it always upsets me when business executives, and Keidanren say that we need to do a better job of educating Japanese young people. Give us back the 1.5 years that you steal from us and then we can talk about improving education. A lot of the problems with Japanese higher education lie directly at the feet of Japanese corporations and their ludicrous hiring practices.
So, I don’t have to feel sorry, right?
What he means by “class” probably doesn’t mean “course” but rather that he has a total of 25 classes per week, so about 5 on average per day, and is probably taking about 10-12 courses per semester. Don’t worry, almost none of those involve heavy work loads, and chances are they know a senpai who already took that class and have all the answers to the exams.