Educational Renaissance / Waseda eyes intl students.

Educational Renaissance / Waseda eyes intl students

By Hiroyuki Ishida / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

Yomiuri

The following excerpts are taken from The Yomiuri Shimbun's Educational Renaissance series. This is the last of a three-part subseries focusing on opportunities for foreign students in Japan.

Waseda University Vice President Katsuichi Uchida has a vision of what his institution will look like in five years: There will be students of various cultural backgrounds walking around its campus, with Japanese and foreign students chatting in English.

As of May 1 last year, Waseda University, based in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo, had 2,435 foreign students--the largest number at any institute of higher education in Japan. To mark the private university's 125th anniversary last October, it released "Waseda Next 125," an outline of its future strategies, especially for the next decade.

The guidelines call for the university to increase to 8,000 the number of foreign students it accepts and the number of Japanese students it sends to overseas over the next five years.

"We aim to improve our level of research and education by having more foreign students," Uchida said, with an eye on attracting students from other Asian countries, particularly China, where interest in higher education is increasing.

Consequently, Waseda has been putting more emphasis on its English …