Cultural barriers of international students employability in Japan

• In Event: International student employability: Narratives of strengths, challenges, and strategies from Global South students

Proposal

This presentation discusses the employability for international students who partake in a full time English-Taught Program (ETP) in Japan. The empirical analysis of this study was designed by means of text-mining analysis. The data collection was conducted from 24 students who originate from the Global South countries. Survey results showed that participants felt the cultural barriers faced at work and barriers in daily life regarding prospective employment in Japan. Working barriers were corporate culture, communication with colleagues, relationship between foreign and Japanese colleagues, and a gender disparity in the workplace were noted as significant. Daily life barriers were maintaining a work-life balance and the difficulty of building interpersonal relationships outside of work due to being a foreigner.
Given this, international student employability is no longer just a research topic for higher education studies. It is also a critical issue for the Japanese business sector. Many prior studies on international students in Japan have mainly focused on their study abroad experiences Although these studies tend to look at international students based on nationality, there is another classification of international students currently enrolled in Japanese universities: 1) international students who belong to Japanese-medium instruction programs (JMI) and take courses in Japanese to obtain a degree; and 2) international students who belong to English-medium instruction programs (EMI) and English-taught programs (ETP) and take courses in English to obtain a degree (Brown, 2017). The difference between EMI and ETP is that ETP enables students to fulfill all the graduation requirements and complete a degree program by taking subjects offered in English, whereas EMI is part of a degree program with only some subjects offered in English (Brown, 2017). Prior studies on international student employment in Japan tend not to make a clear distinction between JMI and EMI / ETP, or focus on the former. In recent years, however, higher education policies issued by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) have been promoting the expansion of EMIs and ETPs. Just because there are many EMIs does not mean those universities are providing a multicultural environment in the truest sense. However, considering that the international talent that Japanese companies expect universities to produce are individuals who are fluent in English and Japanese (or other languages) and familiar with Japanese culture and customs, the expectations for international students who graduate from crossroads-style programs can be considered high.

Authors

• Phillip Pappano, Cy-Fair ISD

• Shingo Hanada, Toyo University, Tokyo