Japan Press Weekly

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2011 December 14 - 20 [WELFARE]

Launch scholarship programs to ensure the right to education

Akahata editorial (excerpts)

The Ministry of Education has requested a budget for grant-type scholarship programs to be incorporated into the nation’s next fiscal year budgets. However, the government is considering denying the request.

Common in world

Out of 30 member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 28 have adopted a grant-type scholarship system. An average 40% of students receive some kind of grant in at least 16 OECD countries. Students in 15 OECD countries study at colleges or universities free of charge. Japan, on the other hand, provides neither a grant-type program nor tuition-free higher education.

Going to high school and then to university costs \10 million on average in Japan. A survey conducted by the University of Tokyo shows that 62% of children from families whose annual incomes amount to more than \10 million go to universities or colleges after high school while only 31% from families whose annual incomes do not reach \4 million continue to higher education. Many students hesitate to take student loans in the face of the severe employment situation after graduation. The existing loan-type scholarship programs are far from enough to secure their right to education.

However, the government’s working-level panel has compiled a final report deferring on a grant-type scholarship plan under the pretext of the expansion of the interest-free scholarship loan program. The panel’s report is completely ignoring the present reality of the increasing gap in Japan between the rich and the rest. Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko will make the final decision. He must be pressured to incorporate a budget for grant-type scholarship programs into the national budget.

The Democratic Party of Japan-led government is even trying to make the existing scholarship programs be more efficient as a financial business. The DPJ government is following in the footsteps of the previous government which incorporated interest-bearing scholarship loans in order to lessen the government share of contributions and having penalized loan delinquents by placing them on a credit blacklist.

Eliminate money anxieties

The Japanese Communist Party has called for the creation of grant-type scholarship programs, the improvement of the interest-free scholarship loan program, and the moratorium period on loan payback to be extended. All these measures are still only the first step toward a society in which everyone can attend schools without financial anxieties, and the JCP believes that a free education system accessible to everyone will provide the foundation for the sound development of a future society in Japan.