Japan and Taiwan’s higher education systems face the dual challenges of an ageing academic workforce and deteriorating working conditions, a major survey warns. The Changing Academic Profession in Asia Survey, completed by nearly 7,000 academics across seven East Asian countries, found that 51.3 percent of Japanese respondents and 42.7 percent of Taiwanese participants feel their working conditions have deteriorated in recent years.

The profile of respondents to the survey, while not fully representative, suggests that the two countries also face the challenge of an ageing academic workforce, says Futao Huang, a professor in Hiroshima University’s Research Institute for Higher Education.

In Japan, more than one in five (20.5 percent) respondents to the survey was aged over 60, and a further quarter (25.2 percent) were in their fifties. Only a quarter (25.1 percent) were under 40. In China, more than half of respondents (59.7 percent) were aged under 40, and fewer than one in 10 (9 percent) was aged 50 or over.
In a working paper produced by the UCL Institute of Education’s Centre for Global Higher Education, Prof. Huang suggests that the deteriorating working conditions in Japan and Taiwan reflect “steady” declines in university budgets in the two countries in recent years.

Commenting on the data, Peter Cave, a senior lecturer in Japanese studies at the University of Manchester, says the declining youth population of Japan means that universities aren’t expanding their student numbers, and therefore their academic staff numbers. “Because academic staff have permanent positions, most are only replaced when they retire. And because of falling or flat student enrolments, some staff are not replaced after retirement, leading to fewer younger staff,” says Dr. Cave.

According to Huang, falling enrolments mean that many qualified young academics are unable to find suitable jobs. “With increased ageing (of the) academic workforce, it would be incredibly difficult for young academics to be employed as full-time academics and for them to be promoted to the upper ladders of professional positions.”
The study does reveal some of the strengths of Taiwan and Japan’s higher education systems: 86.5 percent of Taiwanese respondents and 81.6 percent of Japanese participants said they have doctorates, the highest proportions in the survey apart from Singapore (91.9 percent). In China, the figure is 41.3 percent, and as low as 9.6 percent in Cambodia.