Congratulations on the very timely Feb. 13 editorial "Job-hunting system needs workJ." It is high time that companies not only considered applicants with experience but also refrained from recruiting until students have their degree in hand. In Japan's universities, students are wasting their third and fourth years looking for a job; they have no time to study. Unless someone is determined to enter postgraduate studies and doesn't care about a job right away, he or she studies for about one year — in the second year. The first year is just like that at any Anglo-American university, where students take a variety of subjects at the lowest levels.
Companies do not care about the knowledge that students gain at university. They care only about the reputation of the university, the dress sense of students, the degree to which they bow to the corporate shoguns, and whether they seem smart or not. Therefore, it's moot why Japan needs universities at all. Is it not a waste of money for the government and the parents when companies could recruit their future employees straight from senior high schools, since the companies disregard university education and the grades that students get?
The current recruitment system has bad effects on students. It is my experience that female students tend to study hard while boys don't bother to study because they know they'll get a job no matter what their examination grades are. If Japan wants to improve the standard of university education, it should not allow companies to recruit before a student graduates. That way, everyone would study hard to get good grades.