Caution on reforming university course offerings
Liberal arts majors often become the best software developers and technology employees because their critical thinking skills allow them to see the bigger picture.
Japan should avoid making suicidal education mistakes
Japan's educational system will suffer greatly if political ignoramuses who know the price of everything and the value of nothing are allowed to have their way.
Universities fending off attacks on the liberal arts
As discussed last week, in June the education ministry sent a directive to all 86 national universities in Japan, apparently calling on them to abolish or reorganize their humanities and social sciences departments. I use the word "apparently" because the wording of the letter is ...
Abe government targets the liberal arts
Over the past several weeks I have received many emails from all over the world asking me if reports about government plans to pull the plug on humanities and social sciences departments at Japanese national universities are accurate or just a bad joke. At ...
A place for humanities in the global economy
The humanities remain a constant source of knowledge and skills with intrinsic value that transcends time and place.
Subsidies used as carrot to prod Japan's national universities to streamline and ditch humanities
In a move that has angered academics, the Abe administration plans to reform the national university system by telling schools to abolish departments in fields deemed less useful to the industrial world, such as the humanities, and provide more "practical" education to win a ...
Philosophers still vital to our high-tech world
A Harvard University report showing a big dropoff across the U.S. in the proportion of bachelor degree graduates who majored in the humanities contrasts with the finding by a Swiss think tank that three or four of the top five "Global Thought Leaders" are ...
