Has anybody ever taken a good course or class in Japan? I attended a Japanese university in the past and all subjects seemed to be either too easy or pointless or shallow. I can’t understand how Japanese universities are rated so high internationally when the reality seems to be so detached from the statistics. Any opinions?
Same applies to pointless courses in leadership offered within corporations. Has anybody ever found these useful?
4 comments
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Good Japanese universities are hard to get into. That’s why students work so hard on high school so they can pass university entrance exams. The point of Japanese university is just to get in, because companies will recruit from certain universities. Just the act of getting in proves to the company that you’re worth hiring. The actual quality of most university classes would mediocre, and I wouldn’t expect to learn or grow much from them.
If you live in Tokyo, the research program at the University of Tokyo might be a good (and affordable) option. Perhaps other national universities have similar programs too. Private schools suck generally speaking, bcc many of them are trying to dupe international students for money (like some American universities do)
Some of the research students I met at the uni were struggling, which could be good if you are looking for something challenging. I know a couple of unfortunate people who were too stressed out and didn’t make it through though. But you’ll definitely learn a thing or two there.
University of Tokyo classes I took on exchange were good enough. Graduate level stuff understands that you’re busy with other stuff so lots of the classes are more “intro on X”, but honestly back home (France) I didn’t particularly learn a lot through university classes either.
Your problem might be with university classes in general. I think they’re all mostly “here is the bare minimum, and pointers on how to learn more for motivated people”. What I heard is that graduate level class requirements mainly exist because of pressure from international academia, and it used to be that graduate school in Japan (or UT at least) was almost only research lab stuff.
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Personally I had a good time in some of the economics and public policy classes, cuz it gave me a good overview of a lot of stuff, and like… the quantum computing class was fun enough.