Education in Japan, within the nexus of business, science and internationalization, is currently developing progressive initiatives.

One such trend is to move university teaching out of brick-and-mortar classrooms and into the online sphere. This could be, in its more modest form, simply supplementary resources for the classroom experience that students can use to study while at home or commuting on the train, but potentially it could evolve into a more common form of long-distance learning as well. Staff members at elite Japanese universities are already developing full-scale online courses through a process of trial and error.

Jeffery Cross, a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and one of those at the forefront of this movement in Japan, says there are advantages in the shift to online courses.