Increasing the number of postgraduate students in Japan is crucial to help mitigate the impact of demographic decline, the head of a leading university and president of the national universities association has said.

Nagata Kyosuke, president of the University of Tsukuba, said the best way to “compensate” for Japan’s decreasing population size is to “develop more talent” from each student.

A key way of doing this is through increasing the number of students continuing on to postgraduate studies, he told Times Higher Education.

The number of doctoral students in Japan has declined over the past two decades, despite attempts by the government to incentivise students to pursue these programmes.

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Key barriers include the “salary problem”, Kyosuke said, with the wages on offer to PhD holders often equivalent to those for roles that don’t require such advanced qualifications.

With the shrinking youth population arguably the most significant problem facing Japan, the future of its universities is in question.

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Recently, the government set out plans to encourage mergers within the sector and incentivise some institutions to close. While large national universities like Tsukuba are unlikely to be the target of these schemes, they aren’t immune from the problems facing the sector either.

In June last year, in his role as the president of the Japanese Association of National Universities (JANU), Kyosuke penned a statement saying that universities were reaching crisis points?because of the impact of inflation and declining funding.

The financial situation is “very bad”, he told 色盒直播. “The fundamental support from the government is not increasing, but probably slightly decreasing.”

However, like others in Japan, he remains pragmatic. Given the shrinking pool of traditional university entrants, it seems unlikely that any government will devote significantly more funding to the sector. Universities have to develop a “new way to get money”, he said, including increasing research funding and partnering with companies.

Some, such as the University of Tokyo, have decided to raise their tuition fees. While Tsukuba has yet to follow suit, Kyosuke sees this move as somewhat inevitable.

“It’s another tough question for me. Maybe within three to four years, after discussing with stakeholders,” he said.

But Kyosuke is keen to uphold the principles of Japan’s national universities, which advocate for access to higher education for all students, no matter their financial circumstances. Any tuition fee increases, he said, will have to be offset with wider scholarships.

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Another solution some see as key to the challenges faced by Japanese universities is internationalisation.

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Here, the University of Tsukuba’s strategy dates back 10 to 15 years and a long-term approach has “worked very well” for the institution, said Kyosuke. Of Japan’s 86 national universities, Tsukuba comes second only to the University of Tokyo in terms of the proportion of the student body who are international, with 17.5 per cent from overseas in 2023.

The university is continuing its outward approach, recently opening a branch campus in Malaysia.

This move came as part of a wider push by the Japanese government to become a larger player on the global higher education stage, but Tsukuba is still something of a pioneer in this space. The Malaysia campus, which is housed in the grounds of the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, is Japan’s first offshore university branch providing degree-level education.

Kyosuke hopes it will become a hub for the region, attracting students from surrounding South-east Asian countries.

Malaysia is perceived to be relatively saturated when it comes to foreign campuses, with Tsukuba’s outpost joining the likes of the UK’s University of Nottingham and Australia’s Monash University.

Nevertheless, the vice-chancellor shrugs off questions about competition.“The competition and collaboration is side by side simultaneously,” he said, adding that the university already partners with Nottingham. “It’s competing to get the student but, after getting a student, [it’s] collaboration for teaching or collaboration for educating.”

There was also a secondary motive for setting up the campus, he explained.

Unlike its home campus, which follows a rigid curriculum prescribed by Japanese regulations, the university has introduced a “problem-based learning” approach in Malaysia, allowing students to engage in interdisciplinary education.

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It will be “completely different” to the university’s Tokyo campus, he said. Given the myriad problems facing Japanese universities, embracing change, it seems, may be the best way forward.

helen.packer@timeshighereducation.com