Japan's 'super global universities' scheme: why does the number of 'foreign' students matter?

In 2014, the ‘Top Global University Project’ (TGUP) replaced the Global 30 Project, part of the government’s ‘300,000 International Students Plan’, proposed jointly by six ministries in 2008, which sought to attract 300,000 overseas students to Japanese universities by 2020. As the 2014 enrolment figure of just under 140,000 indicates, this was an ambitious target. Although TGUP ‘provides prioritised support for the world-class and innovative universities that lead the internationalization of Japanese universities’, the government does not explain how this translates to the internationalisation of teaching and learning. Rather, it is assumed that bringing foreign academics and students to Japan and delivering courses in English will automatically result in the internationalisation of Japanese universities. This chapter discusses how TGUP itself embodies the contradictions and problems surrounding the seemingly universal goals of the internationalisation of higher education – increasing student mobility and English medium instruction programs – highlighting the particular nature of ‘English courses’ within university curricula and the expectations and treatment of ‘foreign’ students, which result in non-reciprocal relationships between inbound and outbound students in Japanese universities