Japanese students enrolled in U.S colleges down by 6.2%

アメリカの大学に進学する日本人学生の数は、6.2％低下
Nov 13, 2012, the Japan Daily Press

アメリカの大学に進学する日本人学生の数は、どんどん減っている。
1年前と比べて、日本人学生の登録者数は6.2%減少し、今や19.966人となっている。

一方で、中国人学生の増加は著しい。去年と比べて23.1%増加し、194,000人となった。中国は国別の登録者数においてトップであり、2位はインドである。それに韓国とサウジアラビアが続く。
日本の順位は7位であり、登録者数はピークの1997〜98年のアカデミックイヤー時の6割になってしまった。

これらの数値は、アジアの近隣諸国がますますグローバリゼーションの流れを受け入れているのに、日本だけが取り残されていることを示している。

According to this article, there is a decreasing number of Japanese students
who are going abroad to study at US colleges.

On the campus of Cornell University, I rarely see Japanese students.
Instead I see many students who come from China and Korea.

According to another article,
"Japan: Decline of Students Studying in the U.S. and Overseas",
there are several reasons why Japanese students don't go abroad to study.

One significant reason is the Japan's idiosyncratic Simultaneous Recruiting of New Graduates.
It is a custom that companies hire new graduates all at once and employ them.

In Japan, most students hunt for jobs before graduation from university or
high school, seeking "informal offers of employment" one year before graduation, which will hopefully lead to "formal offer of employment" six months later,
securing them a promise of employment by the time they graduate.

If they can't get the "formal offer of employment" before graduation, they
tend to have difficulty getting a better job because a lot of big companies
adopt this recruiting system.

Furthermore, Japan adopts a different academic calender from other western
countries. (It starts in April and ends in March next year.)

Japanese university students generally begin job hunting all at once in their third year.
It's difficult to go back to Japan before other students start their job search, so many Japanese students hesitate to go abroad to study.