A Review of Japan's Higher Education System: Looking at McVeigh's Book Japanese Higher Education as Myth

A Review of Japan’s Higher Education System: Looking at Brian McVeigh’s book Japanese Higher Education as Myth
by Kimberly Fujioka

Brian J. McVeigh. Japanese Higher Education as Myth. Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe,2002. 318pp. Cloth $68.95, paper $25.95.

Brian J. McVeigh's book Japanese Higher Education as Myth, examines higher learning in Japan's undergraduate institutions known as daigaku. McVeigh’s thesis asserts that Japanese daigaku possess none of the attributes commonly associated with higher education, such as the capacity to "generate knowledge that previously did not exist" (p. 238). While no system of advanced schooling is perfect, as those of us in the U.S. well know, McVeigh’s observation is that Japan’s higher education falls way short the mark. Reading this text, one cannot help but feel the presence of a cautionary tale, looming as the back story, forewarning educators in other countries about the harm in allowing a higher education system to be too influenced by the corporate world. The author notes in the Introduction that, "None of this is new. Recognition of serious problems in Japan's higher education system dates to the early postwar period" (p. 4)—a fact realised by his often citations from old works by scholars such as Ronald Dore, Thomas Rohlen, and William Cummings that were published over twenty years ago. If these citations to old research add to McVeigh's characterization of these problems as longstanding and systemic they also beg the question: Do we need another book that looks at the negative aspects of Japanese education when there exists already a fair amount of scholarship on the topic ?

The answer is yes. Most of the research/publication of literature on Japanese higher education has been done in Japanese. This leaves out the major part of the world that does not read Japanese. Most importantly, it should be looked at again from a new perspective, as a cautionary tale because it shows how an education system tailored to produce workers for the corporate world can go very wrong.