New government relief schemes for disadvantaged students

With national university tuition fees rising this month, the Japanese government is launching new initiatives to help financially strapped students, with a focus on increasing public grant scholarships and exempting loan repayments for some disadvantaged students.

Citing rising administrative costs, national universities hiked tuition fees by 20% to JPY642,960 (US$4,500) a year from the Spring semester which began this month.

An advisory committee to the Ministry of Education recommended further tuition fee increases in the future, which it said would maintain quality and support innovative programmes.

A new bill to amend the 2020 Act on Support for Students in Higher Education (English translation) was enacted in Japan’s parliament, the Diet, in February, taking effect this April.

The new regulation paves the way for students entering universities to apply for free tuition if they are from families with three or more children attending other colleges. A cap on household income as a condition for assistance was also removed.

Assistance for students in private universities was also increased to JPY700,000 (US$5,000) per student. More than 80% of Japan’s three million students are enrolled in private universities with tuition fees of approximately JPY1.5 million (US$10,500) annually.

University of Tokyo

Under the new bill, Japan’s most prestigious national institution, the University of Tokyo, has set up its own scheme offering a 25% tuition fee reduction for new entrants from families living outside Tokyo and its suburbs and with household incomes of less than JPY9 million.

Disadvantaged students coming under the latter category will also pay less – up to JPY50,000 – under its new system.

Eligible applicants must start their undergraduate programme within two years of high school graduation. Todai, as the University of Tokyo is popularly called, also exempts tuition fees for students from families with a household income of less than JPY4 million annually, expanding its current scholarship scheme which previously covered students from families with under JPY6 million in household income.

Todai president Teruo Fujii, in an interview with the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper last month, said that the university wanted to diversify admissions.

Over 40% of Todai students were from households whose annual income exceeded JPY9.5 million, according to a 2023 survey at the university. As of November 2024, out of 13,998 students enrolled in the university’s undergraduate programmes, a majority of students are from the Tokyo metropolitan and Kansai urban areas.

Todai’s annual tuition fee for undergraduates increases to JPY642,960 (US$4,900), the maximum allowed for publicly funded universities.

The university has kept undergraduate fees at JPY535,800 since the fiscal year 2005. However, its finances have deteriorated due to a decline in government subsidies over the past 20 years.

Protests at rising fees

But rising fees have been met with new protests from students at national and public universities.

Rei Kanazawa, a fourth-year international relations student at Todai, is a member of Action for Half Tuition, comprising student activists across Japan. They are lobbying against tuition fee increases, which they view as unfair.

“Costs should not determine who can get a good education, which is critical for a stable future for youth,” Kanazawa told World News.

“We must fight against the widening gap emerging in Japan’s higher education sector,” she said, referring to the gap between students from rich and poor families.

Demonstrations in front of universities to reverse fee hikes and protest meetings at the House of Councillors, the upper house of the Diet, calling for an increase in the public budget for higher education have continued since last month.

They included discussion, ongoing since March, with opposition parties and the government to reverse tuition fee increases, attended by students from more than 200 universities.

Students at the demonstrations spoke about having to abandon plans for graduate studies due to financial difficulties.

Some said public scholarships with repayment conditions created a vicious cycle of poverty against the backdrop of a labour market in Japan that offers increasingly low-paid part-time jobs that are often taken up by students.

Non-regular workers, which include part-time and contract workers, account for 40% of the labour force, some earning approximately JYP3 million in take-home pay, according to 2024 data from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.

The University of Tokyo reports that 80% of its students work part-time, of which half do so to cover living expenses. Students responding to the 2023 Todai survey reported they were too busy to study.

High number of student loans

According to 2023 statistics compiled by the Japan Students Services Organisation (JASSO) affiliated with the Ministry of Education, almost 1.2 million students in higher education, including those enrolled in two-year colleges, have taken out student loans repayable over 10 years.

In comparison, only around 354,000 non-payable publicly funded scholarships were provided by universities.

Professor Hirokazu Ouchi, sociologist at Musashi University in Tokyo, researching student debt, told University World News that Japanese higher education faces future social and economic challenges, but increasing study costs for students was not the answer.

“Public funds for higher education have been traditionally low in Japan compared to other industrialised countries,” he explained.

He referred to the country’s high national deficit, a decreasing student population and a decrease in household income as the main issues facing universities.

For example, Japan spends less than 1% of its gross domestic product on higher education compared to almost 2% in most advanced countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Its 18-year-old population dipped to 1.1million in 2023 – the lowest on record since a high of 2.5 million in 1966 – making it harder to fill university seats.

Ouchi is bitterly critical of Japan’s scholarship programmes, saying they are a “potent illustration” of the burden on students.

A survey of 3,000 students that he conducted in 2024 showed more than 80% of respondents saying student debt weighs heavily on them, limiting their options for marriage or starting a family.

Kanazawa also opposes a system set up by the government for companies to repay employee student loans as part of their employment benefits.

More than 2,500 companies currently implement the scheme, according to Japanese media quoting employers, explaining that it is aimed at retaining staff amid labour shortages.

“This system does not benefit the goal of higher education that must support students who want to study further and conduct research. This is not what we want,” she said.