The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) has announced the recipients of its “Project for the Promotion of Global Human Resource Development”. Commonly known as the “Global 40”, there are in fact 42 institutions: 11 in the institution-wide category, and 31 in the departmental category. Unlike its predecessor and putative namesake, the Global 30 programme, which focussed on attracting more foreign students, the Global 40 programme supports Japanese students in becoming more internationalised, including through studying abroad. The goal is to ensure that Japanese graduates are “global human resources”, one of the current buzz-words in Japanese education and politics.

According to the call for applications, the Global 40 programme provides targeted funding to promote the consolidation of systems to globalise university education, in order to overcome the much-lamented “inward-looking tendency” of Japanese youth, raise Japan’s industrial competitiveness, build a solid foundation for deeper international ties, and produce graduates who will be active on a global stage. The projects chosen are expected to act as models within their own institutions, in the case of the departmental initiatives, and within the sector. Universities will receive between 120 million yen (GBP 950,000) and 260 million yen (GBP 2 million) annually for up to five years.

Projects were evaluated against a number of criteria, including several of relevance to overseas institutions such as:

• Globalisation strategy of the university and improvement of the international transferability of the curriculum
• Measures aligned with each institution’s unique strengths in order to develop the abilities required of “global human resources”
• Measures for the improvement of the global education abilities of academic staff
• Putting in place an environment that encourages Japanese students to study abroad
• Integrated measures to improve language ability, from matriculation to graduation

A look at the list of institutions and departments selected shows that although many are in areas with an inherent global focus such as foreign languages or international relations, many more are in a wide range of subjects, including several science courses (where it has traditionally been hard to persuade students to go abroad).

Although institutions have had to submit a detailed plan in order to apply for the funding, some of them will be continuing to refine their plans and look for partners after being chosen for the programme. Details of each of the successful applications are due to be made public in late October, and we will continue to keep UK institutions updated about opportunities. However, if you already have a partnership with any of the universities selected, it would be worthwhile to enquire about their plans and any openings to develop your existing collaboration.