difficulties in finding jobs for high school grads (9-23-10)

The probably common phenomenon across developed countries is that as a result of each increase in the number of universities, job offers to high-school grads are fewer.

At least in Japan, the situation seems true in which stronger emphasis is put on what university students have entered and followingly graduated from rather than actual productivity they will exercise in workplaces. Indeed, many high-school students acknowledge how essential a diploma of university, hopefully that of a prestigious one, is in securing a job. Further, it’s said that once students enter university in Japan, it’s easy to get a degree, in comparison with the cases in other developed countries.

However, as a result of universities which have flourished over 800 nationwide, some of them are given a competition ratio less than one and threatened with bankruptcy.

In the meantime, most examiners in job interviews are university grads themselves. In this situation, it’s plausible that the examiners favor university grads more than high-school grads. This mechanism must be another driver to urge the importance of graduating university on high-schoolers.

Yet, while prestigious universities constantly yield competitive grads who will be contributive in each professional field, a question could be cast at some of the rest of Japanese universities: What differences do they make of their grads to high-school ones? One of the answers to this question might be social skills, for example. In university, students communicate with a wider variety of people including representatives of companies in a job fair to make it essential to abide by etiquette.

Most high-school students have high morals, meanwhile. Most of them are fairly disciplined even when they don’t aim to enter university. In their school life, club activities may teach good discipline while the process of dealing with mandatory study must also test self-control. (Facing textbooks and reference books to pass the entrance exams of university must add to stress.) However, high-school students with high degrees of morals would be unfortunate if they were subsumed under the same reputation smeared by other students who didn’t have them, especially when all of the students wore the same school uniform.

Mastering the contents of compulsory subjects found just in textbooks is mostly not enough to make students competitive against passing a series of entrance exams of university. Students must use additional books. In a mid-level public high school in Tokyo, in classes the pace and depth in each subject are far short of cram schools’. In other words, just graduating from an average high school is usually not so difficult. Notwithstanding, while practicalities tested by the entrance exams of university, like those about English and classic Japanese, are often discussed also by experts, it’s an interesting scene that the minds of some students who barely survive semester exams fall in the state of desperation as they, in the senior year, find themselves wanting to advance to university. Students of this kind may likely lack both morals and social skills.

Still, some universities are reputed high for the practicality of their students/grads despite their not highest ranking based on the standard deviation, a grading system on which the marks of top-tier universities like the University of Tokyo are somewhere around 70 while those of average universities are 40 or 50. According to a spin-off book of PRESIDENT magazine, these practicality-minded universities provide programs that meet the requests from companies, about gauging students’ abilities, and those from students, about appealing their caliber to companies.

A case out of the magazine is the following:


“Although my university has a nice outlet, its contents are completely unknown to the public,” begrudged Koji Furuya, the chief of Kogakuin University’s Global Engineering section.

“It isn’t true that industry-oriented universities can’t promote students to renowned companies unless the university’s rating on the standard deviation is high,” he insists.

At 40 or 41, standard deviation-based marks of many industry-oriented universities are not so high to high-school students, according to Yoyogi Seminar, one of the most known cram schools. However, the graduation ratio of such a kind of university is close to 100 percent every year and a range of companies which give unofficial decisions on employment includes Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Isuzu, Toshiba, Hitachi, Fujitsu and Canon.

The most prominent feature of the GE section in Kogakuin University is its governing principle, being different from one of a typical industry section. That is: To make students focus chiefly on laboratory work.

“Whether it’s the science and engineering course, universities appeal their laboratories which students belong to. But companies prefer flexible students who can adjust to a change in markets’ need to students who follow an isolated theme assigned by the professor. ”

There are two points of note in the GE section’s education: one is studies in collaboration with companies and another is emphasis on English. In addition, instead of being similar to sections at other universities, in which students take laboratory education focusing on the professor’s own research interests, in the GE section, joint industry-university education and a research program named ECP--Engineering Clinic Program--are implemented during the junior and senior years. Based on themes presented by 11 companies like TDK and Nissan, students tackle assignments together with the companies’ engineers. They deal with studies keeping the actual manufacturing process in mind, like the development of (a line of) medical robots, or software. This situation is identical to letting students participate in development projects inside companies, and companies evaluate students highly as their “colleagues.”

Another focal point is English.

“Now engineering is active around the globe. Although many science and engineering majors are not good at performing English, they will lose a chance after entering companies unless they overcome the difficulty,” says Mr. Furuya.

Being scared of English and avoiding travel overseas will result in limited performance in the maker and adverse effects on promotion. In the GE section, studying overseas is mandatory in the third year regardless of the concentration on engineering. Students who were initially not appreciative of the plan talk about their experiences once they come back, and will start engaging in English study enthusiastically. In cooperation with Berlitz--a major English-conversation school--classes are twice as many as those at typical engineering-oriented universities, and such five classes are held each week during the first and second years. Amongst the students who have shed antipathy toward English, there is an example who improved his TOEIC score to 905 from 385. Mr. Furuya insists that high English skills with an engineering major will help go far ahead of colleagues after the student joins a company.

“Makers can’t survive hiring on the standard deviation. My students are rated high because they have learned basic things and can adapt to changes. I want to expand the recognition across the examination industry and parents,” says Mr. Furuya.

Like the cases of the engineering section doing well giving graduating students an edge in their job-hunting activities, it must be best when applicants for university have researched the features of academies and ideally take the perspective of potential companies to work for.


Unlike the excerpt above, universities which don’t offer substantive programs for arming students with practical skills look as if squeezing the throats of hopeful high-school job-seekers during the job-hunting period of uni students which mostly start in the third year. It’s untrue that this sort of universities do nothing for society, as students find jobs around the campus and there are concerned staff, like professors and recruitment agents, who make a living around it. However, it’s probably time that the government should heed to the voices of high-school students confronting the difficulty.

It was telecast that the business of a zero-interest loaning program for high-school students with an eye to matriculation was facing difficulty after an increase in the demand began imposing more constraints on the budget. (Meanwhile, private loans with the same kind of function for high-school students require an interest rate of 4 to 5 percent.) The Democratic Party of Japan’s plan for nullifying the fees of public high schools will help households save money and allocate the surplus for the fees of a cram school or those of a university. It’s just highly improbable that this scheme will solely be sufficient to reduce the unemployment rate which is currently standing about five percent. Including this, still, every possible measure should be carried out holistically.

Despite the general perception of the difficulty in finding jobs for both high-school and uni students, what has yet been made known is that around four small- to middle-size companies give offers to one university student while about one major company does so.

However, smaller companies are relatively vulnerable to collapse in maintaining their businesses. In the case of Japan, meanwhile, changing companies halfway less likely leads to better conditions like a higher salary and easier working hours unless the worker’s skills, which are suggested by educational and occupational records on the resume, are prominent. Being hired by a major corporation usually necessitates passing a series of tests and a job interview, yet still many uni students opt to rally up to the narrowest and thorniest, but most promising entrance.

I just wish that companies had high acumen or serendipity, and leniency. There must be many talented high-school students who can contribute to the productivity of each company. Why do companies not make more job offers to high-school students? Given how old they are, those may not perform as skillfully as mature employees. Yet, neither may many uni students. Regardless of what school he or she has come from, the aptitude for each job is tested during apprenticeship. After starting from the common square one, he or she may be successful down the road. Otherwise, it’s a flop. There is no need to be overly pessimistic in the earliest stage, before light comes in. There are some exemplary presidents heading major companies with no uni diplomas. They deserve honor.