Education and training for the intercultural competence of Japanese university graduates: policy, practice, and markets in informal education

For many decades, undergraduate education appeared to occupy a com­ fortably inconsequential place in postwar Japan’s education and employ­ ment system. University life was seen widely as a hiatus, preceded by the pressures of entrance examinations and formal and supplementary schooling, and succeeded by a rigorous induction to the working world as constructed by employers. The role of the university as gatekeeper and minder, rather than educator, was encapsulated in the truism that admis­ sion to university is difficult, while graduation is easy. Although never universally applicable, this stereotype certainly epitomised the mainstream conception of the interface between secondary education, university, and work.