Outbound student mobility in Japan nose-dived. Why does the government claim it went up?

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Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic assumptions of an inevitable rise in cross-border student mobility dominated the emerging discourse on the globalisation of higher education. Yet, data collected by a group of international organisations shows that contrasting a global rise in figures, outbound student mobility in Japan had already dropped by more than half in the years before. In response, the Japanese government publicly committed to raising the numbers again, declaring ambitious goals and implementing new funding programmes. A critical analysis shows that in practice, however, it administered significant cuts in the related budget and merely sought to create the impression that figures were rising by shifting attention towards its own, methodologically questionable data. Based on interviews with government and university officials, this article examines the rationale behind this twofold strategy. The findings indicate that in Japan’s post catch-up ideology, government leaders no longer believe that outbound student mobility can support the country’s economic development and therefore do not consider it a budgetary priority. Still, in what this article terms ‘strategic decoupling’, they seek to maintain legitimacy by creating the impression of complying with the global norm of rising student mobility.