Good practices to ensure sustainable education for international students' success

Abstract

With the “Global 30” Project being implemented, an influx of international students (IS) at Japanese universities is expected. Within the so-called “monolingual” Japanese society the Japanese university is a multilingual entity, especially for undergraduate IS who are required to complete Japanese and English courses. IS do not always demonstrate the expected Japanese skills and often lack English proficiency. Accordingly, IS tend to underperform in regular course work and in required English classes. Language and communication issues often result in unsustainable education for IS — retaking courses, demotivation, or dropping out of university. The above led the authors to investigate the availability of student services and support at ten universities (5 in Asia, 3 in Europe, and 2 in North America). Twenty-five undergraduate IS at an engineering university in Japan gave opinions on their IS experience. The results indicated that neither the curriculum by itself nor simple extra-curricular support systems will suffice to pursue a successful academic career for IS. This report suggests that Japanese universities will benefit from creating additional services and integrating existing services with the community. The authors propose language programs should build multilingual communities and promote multilingualism.