Grad school in Japan -> professor route. Chances of being hired?

12 comments

1. This was for ESL but from a poll a while back I was surprised at the number of college professors on this reddit. There are also a ton of people with masters so there seems to be some extra leg work, getting published, contacts and stuff involved.

2. Lived in Japan from ’05-’10. While teaching at Nova, I met an English guy with a PhD in chemistry who was taking a break from UK academia. After a year, he got a job at Tskuba Uni as a lecturer, then researcher. Another Canadian friend with an MS in Chemistry and was an adjunct lecturer for Nova (they had a uni gig program) for a class or two every semester.

   Both had told me publications seem to matter quite a bit. Also, a lot of their work came from networking.

   With your unique skill set, I don’t see an issue with getting programming work. Since you’re a native speaker of English, many universities want some instruction in STEM in English.

   IMHO, work/life balance is still a foreign concept to many Japanese institutions. I taught corporate English for a few years, and the happiest employees I ever met were the ones working at Microsoft Japan. They also made waaaaaay more money and actually took vacations.

   Tenure at Japanese universities is tough, and being non-Japanese makes it tougher.

   You can get the teaching gigs, but job security is tough.

3. Do you know J-REC? You can search for positions in English or Japanese, and filter by lecturer/professor level, research area, location, etc. Doing a search of jobs that are available now may give you some insight into what your chances may be.

   Having said that, I personally have tenure at a national university with only a Masters, but it seems that I mostly lucked out. I want to do my doctorate, but I’m literally swimming in projects and classes. I’m so so busy. Most others I know, especially in the STEM fields, move from this university to that, mostly being hired for short-term research projects. If the project doesn’t get renewed, they move on.

   “Moving on” is sometimes by finding a relevant position on the aforementioned J-REC site, or just messaging other professors/researchers that they know are literally asking for work.

   The international PhD students I know don’t tend to lecture on the side, though many have TA or RA campus jobs. Your current visa only allows 28(?) working hours? Because of that, I think a university wouldn’t give you tenure. Small TA or RA positions are definitely possible, and usually pay 1000-1200-ish/ hour. I don’t know whether changing your visa type will cause you to lose your scholarship or not—definitely don’t lose your scholarship just for the purposes of working, though!

   So, my advice to you would be to attend as many conferences as you can, looking for networking connections. It seems also to be a good idea to maintain a website of all of your research so that your experience is easily Google-able. If your finances afford it, I would just smash out the PhD and then focus on getting a full-time/tenured position.

4. [deleted]

5. You a recruiter with zero experience in the IT field wet dream. You’ll be able to find a job easily

6. I did it. The advice I would give depends on your age.

7. I’m a tenured prof at a solid university here, albeit in EFL. If you have N1 Japanese, a solid skill set in software that is rare out here, and the proper credentials, I think you have a very strong chance at securing a good job here.

   There are tons English teachers trying to get university jobs, but not all that many positions for them. What universities really want is people with expertise in things students actually major in, such as computer science. They would take more foreigners, but usually they don’t speak Japanese. If you have that too, you are in a really good position. If it didn’t work out for you, at the very least you would enhance your skill set further by continuing your education out here.

   My advice is that you pursue a PhD part time while you continue working in the industry. Aside from helping you pay your way, it will also keep your résumé up-to-date with the real world experience right up until when you get your degree. You can also make sure that your PhD in your work experience go hand-in-hand so that one complements the other.

   To Answer some of your questions:

   1. I think you might have trouble finding part-time work, because what you are doing is pretty highly specialized. Your best chance would be to start graduate school, and potentially find work through your advisor or other people you meet there. Put yourself into the academic world through your education

   3. Job security for part-time work is pretty shit, as is contract. But if you get tenure at a good school you are set. They couldn’t fire you even if you really did do something horrible.

   4. It depends on the place. Add some public universities you might have only a couple classes a semester, at a private university you could have four or six. Not bad in my opinion. But the real bane is administrative work. As you become more senior, you will be put on more and more committees doing pointless paperwork. Being a foreigner might mean you have fewer of those responsibilities, but you want to pull your weight at least a little bit in that respect.

   5. It helps to know Japanese to make sure students understand things in certain situations, but for the most part you would be using your Japanese with administrative staff and for answering emails, understanding what is happening in faculty meetings, etc. although I think it places like Tokyo university they have a special system for foreign hires and a whole group of administrators that cater to them in English. The Japanese can make you more competitive for jobs at private universities, where they will expect you to pull your own weight a bit more.

   6. I love it. Nine hours teaching a week, 30 weeks a year, 22 weeks off. Spend a lot of time on research, but that is what I would have wanted to do anyway. That whole “find a job you love and you won’t work another day in your life“ thing. Still make an excellent salary well north of 10 million. I’m sure I could make more at Google or something, but that’s fantastic for an English teacher.

8. [deleted]

9. I don’t know about computer sciences, but in medical sciences the chances of being hired straight as an associate professor without having already published some good papers and received a few grants is close to zero (and effectively zero if you are a woman). If you speak fluent Japanese, you can be a party time lecturer easily, even without PhD (not sure N1 is enough… but considering that a lot of the technical vocabulary in your field is in English already…).

   That being said, universities are some of the shittiest places to work in Japan. Low salaries and regular overwork (14h a day and weekends is usual). Most of the people who become professors are either foreigners who can’t speak Japanese, Japanese who are too socially awkward to work in the industry, and the people who are afraid to get in the job market and feel like they are on a dead end after wasting 10y of their lives in grad school.

10. Look at the job listings on JREC before you do anything else. If you see a listing in the field you want to go into, go ahead with your plan.

    I don’t think it’s wrong to say that most teaching positions at the university level are in EFL. Not to say that there isn’t any work available for someone in the field you’re thinking of pursuing, but it may not be in a university classroom.

11. I have a PhD in a humanity from a mid-tier place in the US and roughly 14 refereed. publications including 3 or 4 in the best journals of my field.

    I teach English and manage a program at a middling national university in Japan. I can’t be fired but also don’t have a good job title.

    You need to carefully parse between answers that are about getting university employment in IR and answers that are about getting university employment in English.

    ​

    >What are the chances of me being hired out of either of these programs as a lecturer or professor? Is PhD required for lecturer?

    IR: Zero.

    English: also zero for the professor. Maybe for term lecturer.

    ​

    >Do part-time lecturing positions even exist here?

    There’s tons of it for English and some for IR. Here, we’re talking pay by the コマ. For IR for non-Japanese, I’m going to say not much.

    ​

    >How’s the job security?

    For people with tenure at public universities it is great. For people tenured at famous privates, great. For people at struggling privates regardless of tenure status, not so great. (少子化＝　massive decrease in number of students).

    For the non-tenured, most people are stuck doing part time jobs or jumping back and forth between different places due to the 5-year rule.

    ​

    >
    How much research vs lecturing is required or expected?

    Most universities (private or public) use a very quantitative approach to research. This will be used for hiring and promotion.

    Number of classes will be by contract and depend on whether you’re in IR proper or you’re in English. In English, I see some rather high courseloads (8 per semester at some places — note that a class in Japan meets 1x/week for 90 minutes x 15 weeks [or equivalent time in different batches]). For IR, you’d probably do 4 classes semester and be responsible for a zemi.

    ​

    >
    How much work is going to be in Japanese language if I am teaching/researching at an English-language or bilingual program like the ones I’ve listed?

    ​

    Do you mean when you’re a student or when you’re faculty? Well, it doesn’t matter, it will probably all be conducted in Japanese anyway. Some of the English programs are scams to attract people from other countries to pay full tuition (a MEXT goal to copy US/UK/Australia).

    ​

    >
    Anyone who is currently a professor here, how do you like it? Especially if you pivoted in from working, how would you compare the two?

    I dunno. I make less or about the same as when I did web application development. But I live in Japan with my wife. I get to write about things I care about.

12. Considering the shrinking job market in academia and how even part-time lectureships nowadays are flooded with applications from newly minted PhDs/postdocs, having a PhD would be the bare minimum if you’re thinking of a career in university education (unless you are okay with being an English teacher).

    And no, there is zero chance of becoming a professor straight out of a PhD program (even one as prestigious as Todai or Waseda). You will need to work your way up and build up your teaching experience and publications list.