2024-01-30
The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s serialized column that closes out the issue of Shukan Shincho released on 1/26.
This article, too, proves that he is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
It is a must-read not only for the Japanese people but for people throughout the world.
Reform of the Study-Abroad System
Not long after my daughter entered a state university, I received orders to return here.
I put my daughter in a dormitory and returned to Japan.
I had already paid the first-semester tuition of $720.
I intended to remit the second-semester payment from Japan, but I was astonished when I saw the bill that arrived.
It showed an amount exceeding $10,000.
Why had $720 jumped that high?
When I asked the reason, I was told that if the parents lived in the United States and paid both federal and state taxes, because it was a state university, children from taxpaying households could attend for lower tuition.
However, once the parents returned to their home country, the daughter would have the same status as an overseas student.
In other words, as someone who did not pay state taxes, she would be required to pay the total cost of her education.
Thus, I had to pay $10,000 in tuition every semester, and there were also dormitory fees, living expenses, and the cost of maintaining a car.
Taken together, it became quite a burden.
State universities were still the cheaper option, but at a private university such as the University of Southern California（USC）, tuition was three times as high.
Dormitory fees were also high.
It is only natural that students desperately try to obtain scholarships.
Then what about foreign students who come to Japan?
Nowadays, Shina people come in great numbers.
To my surprise, the Japanese government is extremely generous toward them.
There is a government-sponsored foreign-student program, and if they apply for it, even their airline ticket to Japan is provided free of charge.
Once they arrive in Japan, they receive a monthly allowance of 120,000 yen, and if they want a scholarship of 140,000 yen, they automatically receive that as well.
The greatest surprise is that all tuition is completely free.
Even though they do not pay a single yen in taxes in Japan.
There are still more preferential measures: they can receive priority admission to public housing and, for some reason, child allowances as well.
The Ministry of Education calls on Shina people to study abroad in Japan, saying that even those with wives and children can live well enough while studying.
There are as many as 4,000 such lavishly treated Shina students studying abroad.
For a time, I taught at a private university.
There were many Shina students there as well.
There are said to be 230,000 foreign students, of whom 100,000 are Shina people.
Those other than the government-funded group are privately financed students.
Because they receive no allowance, they work part-time in the nightlife and entertainment business and elsewhere.
They ask their friends to submit attendance cards for them and thereby falsify their attendance in class.
They do at least appear in person for examinations, but they openly cheat.
Even when warned, they do it again.
Unable to forgive the mentality that they could get through with proxy attendance and cheating, I failed all of the students concerned.
Then the faculty meeting recommended that I let them pass.
If the university accepts them, the Ministry of Education gives money to the university.
Apparently, if they are failed, the university gains a bad reputation and the number of applicants declines.
Even so, when I firmly failed them, I was the one who was fired.
That is how different it is from the treatment of international students in the United States.
Incidentally, Shina people freely take part-time jobs, including jobs in the nightlife and entertainment business, and after graduation they simply find employment with Japanese companies, but none of this is permitted in the United States.
A student visa for international students and a work visa that permits employment are completely different things.
In that respect, Shina students who come to Japan face no restrictions and work part-time as much as they like.
As for whether the privileged government-funded students refrain from working part-time, the Yomiuri says, “No, they do work.”
In the United States, they steal cutting-edge technology and send it back to their home country.
I believe that they similarly steal intellectual property in Japan, but Japan does not even have laws to crack down on it.
It is like giving money to industrial spies.
Everyone thinks that this should be stopped and the money redirected to support Japanese students.
By contrast, Mr. Kishi-kyū of the Kōchikai, which receives support from Shina through party tickets, says that the preferential treatment of Shina students will remain unchanged, while Japanese students will be given scholarships through a joint public-private project to send “1,000 students a year” overseas.
It is better than nothing, but as for the source of the funds, the plan was to solicit annual donations of 2 billion yen from “260 organizations, companies, and individuals.”
While hundreds of billions of yen in national funds are spent annually on foreigners, support for Japanese students is to be financed by private donations, but when calculated, that amounts to 2 million yen per person.
That is enough only to pay the tuition and still leaves other expenses uncovered.
Cut the number of Shina students.
That alone would cover everything.