Japan turns to India to meet STEM, internationalisation aims

Japan is stepping up efforts to increase the number of university students it receives from India, with a particular focus on graduate and doctoral enrolment in science, technology, engineering and medical (STEM) fields, as part of internationalisation plans to counter Japan’s demographic crunch.

In 2024, the Japanese government’s Integrated Innovation Strategy included India as a key collaborator in Asia.

The government is also supporting forums involving presidents of leading universities from Japan and India to disseminate information about the benefits of studying in Japan to attract more undergraduate enrolments from overseas. Notably, it is expanding India-specific initiatives.

“Japan is welcoming young Indian researchers into our universities, especially into postdoc programmes,” said Takao Shihara, deputy director at the International Science and Technology Policy Division of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

Shihara referred to the LOTUS exchange programme launched in September 2024 under the ministry’s Sakura Science Exchange Program, which has been supporting international students since 2014.

LOTUS is exclusively targeted at Indian students as the flagship of the Japanese government’s expansion of its outreach. “The LOTUS fellowship covers a one-year study programme and is the first step by the government aimed at boosting the low number of Indian students in Japan,” Shihara told University World News.

Applications are vetted by Japanese universities. Host universities include Hokkaido University, Tohoku University, Tsukuba University and the University of Tokyo, representing Japan’s top-class STEM research environments.

Together with Indian institutions, Japanese host universities will jointly supervise postdoctoral researchers, focusing on collaborative research and other initiatives. Japan will also support recipients in planning career paths in Japan, according to the ministry.

The trial programme in 2024 accepted 45 students from India who enrolled in Japanese universities for medical, environmental science and engineering programmes, among others. This year, it will accept up to 270 students from India for entry in 2026.

Each fellowship recipient studying STEM with a specific emphasis on artificial intelligence and other subjects at top Indian universities will receive JPY3 million (US$20,000) in funding to support travel expenses, living costs and domestic transportation for a year.

Opportunities for student corporate internships, with the aim of retaining students for longer in Japan, are also part of the programme, Nikkei Asia, Japan’s largest financial media, reported earlier this year, but noted that Japan’s insular corporate structure, based on rigid employment practices, could put off some Indian students.

Indian students as part of international targets

Japan has set a target of accepting 400,000 international students by 2033 and sees India as a major source of students to reach this number.

“India has become a focal point for Japan's higher education sector,” said Dr Kaori Hayashi, director of the University of Tokyo’s India Office and the university’s executive vice-president, in a commentary article published by Nikkei Asia last December.

She added: “With India's economic growth and shifting geopolitical circumstances, it is high time for Japanese universities to take India more seriously.”

Hayashi said overcoming the challenges in reaching out to India would serve “as a litmus test for how open Japan's education system can become to the world”.

The university last year announced a new five-year combined bachelor and masters degree to be launched in 2027. The degree will comprise 50% international students and will be taught in English.

The university aims to raise the proportion of international students to at least 30% of total undergraduate students and 40% of graduate students by 2049, up from 2% and 30%, respectively, now.

Tokyo University also leads a Japanese university consortium that is part of the “Global Network Project to Promote Study in Japan”, initiated by the Ministry of Education.

Dr Pankaj Mittal, secretary-general of the Association of Indian Universities (AIU), an umbrella organisation of some 970 Indian universities, visited Japan earlier this month.

She told University World News: “Their fees are very low compared to US or European countries, the quality of education is good, and they do have some English medium courses. In spite of that, the number of Indian students is low, and they are also offering scholarships and fellowships,” said Mittal.

Tokyo University serves as a node for the distribution of government grants to other universities in the network. “It works like a central agency; it’s not like one university,” Mittal told University World News.

Private sector to assist

Last October, Acumen, part of the Sannam S4 Group, a consultancy group on transnational education in Asia which also advises universities on global student recruitment, signed a contract with the University of Tokyo to collaborate to increase Japan’s student intake from South Asia. Working in this way with a private company is an unusual move for a Japanese university.

Linking with the University of Tokyo as the apex university in the network meant “linking with the entire university sector”, Acumen’s CEO Adrian Mutton explained, adding that some universities were more interested than others.

“The idea is to broaden this out across the country and not make it a Tokyo or Kyoto focus,” Mutton told University World News.

“As with many universities and many other countries, the reality is that major cities tend to be more internationally minded than the smaller prefectures. Part of our mandate is to ensure this has a nationwide impact,” he said.

Mutton described it as an “incredible underachievement” that Japan has not so far attracted more students from India. Acumen has agreed on a target with the Indian ambassador and the Indian embassy in Tokyo to grow that number to 15,000 Indian students a year within five years, by 2031.

While the Japanese government does not set targets for students from specific countries, this target has been calculated by Acumen and the Indian embassy to be achievable, he said.

Working with the private sector is a new thing for Japanese institutions, he conceded, but past efforts by the Japanese government had not managed to achieve the increases in Indian student numbers that were hoped for.

Mutton referred to Japan’s 400,000 target for international students and a target of half a million Japanese students going abroad per year. “These are big numbers, but the government has recognised that they have to do this to address its [demographic] challenges,” he said.

The latest figure released by Japan’s Ministry of Health earlier this month put the number of births in 2024 at 686,061 – down 5.7% from the previous year and the first time that annual births fell below 700,000 since records began in 1899.

“It highlights that Japan’s population crisis has reached historic levels,” Mutton said. “They need 4.2 million foreign workers in the country in the next five years, and they're going to be a long way short of all of the targets that they're setting for workforce expansion,” he noted.

Low numbers of Indian students

Currently, the number of Indian students enrolled in Japanese higher education lags way behind Chinese student numbers. According to statistics released by the Japan Student Services Organization (JASSO) in 2024, there were 923 Indian postdoc students in Japan. In comparison, Chinese postdocs are the largest foreign group at more than 4,000, followed by Indonesia with 2,170.

At the undergraduate level, there were just 450 students from India – in 19th place behind other countries. The two top countries of origin for foreign students are China and South Korea, at 50,000 and 14,273, respectively. Often linked to shared writing systems and cultural affinity.

In contrast, more than 450,000 Indian students are in the United States. Figures released by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs also show that there are 55,000 Indian students in the United Kingdom and large numbers in Australia and Canada, indicating a preference to study in English, a language still not the most popular medium of instruction in Japan.

Mutton pointed to India’s 15% graduate unemployment rate, compared to Japan’s shortage of young people.

“Demographically, the two countries are perfectly symbiotic. They can provide each other with exactly what the other needs. And as a strategic national partnership, which Japan and India are committed to developing, workforce mobility is something that both governments are very keen on,” he added.

Indian students will typically specialise in STEM, with an eye on the engineering and computer science jobs that Japan desperately needs to fill, he said.

“As an ‘exclusive partner’ to the Japanese government’s project in India, we will be launching six language schools across India this year with an Indian partner university.

“We’re providing a combination of in-person language schools to study at as part of your Indian undergraduate degree or as a language programme and making existing online platforms with the government of Japan available to a wider audience.

“These are to scale up that [language training] capacity with a clear intention of using it as a pathway into Japan,” Mutton said.

He also pointed to niche high schools in India that offer Japanese, particularly in and around the Delhi region.

University collaboration

A number of top Japanese universities recently concluded agreements with Indian institutions. Most notably, they include an agreement between the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay and Tohoku University and IIT Hyderabad with the University of Tokyo.

Tohoku University, a leading Japanese institution, set up a Joint Institute of Excellence with IIT-Bombay in April this year, aimed at promoting research cooperation and industry-university co-creation.

Akiyoshi Yonezawa, professor, global strategy office at Tohoku University, described ongoing efforts in Japan to increase student numbers from India as an opportunity to strengthen science and technology in the higher education sector.

“The exchange with India is not only for research. The wider aim is co-creating. Japan is strong in hard science, and India is a leader in the soft sciences. It’s a good collaboration,” he told University World News.

Specific areas of excellence include Tohoku University’s world-leading disaster sciences research, robotics and software innovation. Yonezawa expected new collaboration in the AI and semiconductor sectors, among others.

Currently, Indians comprise only 28 out of 1,000 international students studying at the university. He said Tohoku University will also step up the number of Japanese students studying in India.

Mutton also highlighted collaboration successes at IIT Hyderabad, an institution, he said, that was “at the heart of the Indo-Japan agenda” and had “done a great job of bringing people together. Its aim is to build strong research collaboration between India and Japan”.

However, he cautioned that “IIT Hyderabad does not represent the bigger opportunity in India” and that collaborations with Japanese universities would expand to different parts of India as part of Tokyo University and Acumen’s collaboration with AIU.

“We want Japanese students in our universities. So we can work on having Japanese students either for a short-term programme or for a long-term programme,” said AIU’s Mittal.

“Many Indian universities are interested in partnerships between India and Japan. It could be student exchange, faculty exchange, or it could be joint degrees, dual degrees, or training programmes. There are many types of partnership.

“We are not talking of one-way mobility but two-way mobility,” said Mittal.