Japan Press Weekly

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2011 January 12 - 18 [WELFARE]

Gov’t to encourage volunteer work by college students on scholarships

The Education Ministry has decided to promote volunteer activities among college students who are using the government’s scholarship programs as a means to raise their awareness of “public interests.”

This policy has been set out based on a report published by the ministry’s panel, the Central Council for Education, on future financial assistance for college students.

The report points out that college education is not fully recognized as a “public interest” among students. It urges universities to have students realize the public aspects of education and encourage them to “return knowledge and skills they have acquired to the society both now and in the future.”

“I doubt that the financial assistance the government has provided for college students is appropriate to the ‘public interests’ it claims,” said Okamura Minoru, vice secretary general of the Japan Students Services Organization workers’ union. “What the government has done instead is to introduce the beneficiary-pays idea into higher education,” he pointed out.

In its 1971 report, the Central Council for Education designated education fees as “investments” and proposed that individual beneficiaries of the investment should bear a certain educational cost.

The annual tuition at national universities has rapidly increased from 12,000 yen in 1970 to more than 530,000 yen in 2010.

Okamura stressed, “The scholarship programs are intended to guarantee citizens’ constitutional right to receive education. Before urging students to recognize ‘public interests,’ what the government should do is to create a structure that enables them to concentrate on learning without having financial anxiety.”