Let’s discuss university scholarships for poorer students

This week's featured article

TOMOHIKO OSAKI, THE JAPAN TIMES

With many young adults struggling to pay off student loans, anti-poverty advocates launched an online campaign Monday calling on the government to join other developed countries in instituting a scholarship program.

The online campaign comes amid rising criticism that Japan lags significantly behind other industrialized nations in terms of investing in efforts to help financially underprivileged students pursue university-level education.

The underlying problem, the campaigners said, lies in what is commonly called the shōgakukin system, which uses a word that literally means "scholarship" but essentially consists of student loans in disguise.

"Many financially challenged children hesitate to advance to higher education, or some of them even end up working in the sex industry to repay the debts," said chief campaigner Hiroki Komazaki.

Japan's "extremely flimsy" efforts to assist poor students poses a glaring contrast with other developed countries, where free access to universities or full-fledged scholarships are increasingly taken for granted. The petitioners are looking to collect about 50,000 signatures within a month and submit them to Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga.

Although a long-standing issue, the scholarship conundrum was catapulted into the political spotlight recently as both ruling and opposition lawmakers began campaigning to woo 18- and 19-year-olds ahead of this summer's crucial Upper House election, which will be the first to observe the new minimum voting age of 18.

In contrast with Japan's position as the world's third-largest economy, the gravity of its child poverty and widening income disparities has increasingly come to light in recent years. Last month UNICEF released a report that ranked Japan 34th out of 41 developed nations in household income equality involving children aged up to 17, placing it just ahead of Italy, Spain, Israel and Greece.

A 2014 OECD survey, meanwhile, found Japan's "relative poverty rate" in 2009 of 16.0 percent to be the sixth-worst among its 34 members and much higher than the global average of 11.3 percent. The relative poverty rate refers to the proportion of the population that is living below the poverty line, defined as half the median income of the total population.

First published in The Japan Times on May 10.

Warm up

One-minute chat about school.

Game

Collect words related to money, e.g., salary, bank, cash.

New words

1) catapult: to bring suddenly to prominence; e.g., "The album catapulted the group to stardom."

2) gravity: seriousness; e.g., "He understands the gravity of the situation."

Guess the headline

Anti-p_ _ _ _ _ _ advocates launch petition for state-backed s_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ program

Questions

1) What is the campaign calling for?

2) What do the campaigner think of the shōgakukin system?

3) What have international groups said about poverty in Japan?

Let's discuss the article

1) What do you think of the current shōgakukin system?

2) Do you agree with the reports from UNICEF and the OECD?

3) What needs to be done to tackle poverty in Japan?

Reference

奨学金はより多くの若者が学びを深め、その後の生活をより豊かにする助けとなるはずですが、奨学金の返済によってその後の生活が苦しくなるという話がしばしば聞かれます。

国の中での格差が少なく、一億総中流と言われた日本の中での格差が広がっていることを指摘する声が強くなってきています。次の世代に繋ぐべき 豊かな社会はどのようにあるべきなのでしょうか。

答えがでるまでには長い時間がかかりますが、朝の会に参加し、皆さんでこのトピックについて話し合ってみましょう。

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