TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/012389/01238900.072

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 4KB | 64 lines

EDUCATION, Page 57

Japan's Search for U.S. Colleges

East meets West as Tokyo goes campus shopping


    They own Los Angeles' Arco Plaza. In New York City they have
scooped up the Exxon Building, the Algonquin Hotel and the
vaultlike home of Tiffany & Co. They are beating the U.S. at
everything from VCRs to semiconductors. And now they are trying to
buy U.S. colleges.

    In recent months Japanese businessmen and educators have
quietly offered to bail out several financially strapped schools
in return for control of their governing boards. The purpose: to
expand study-abroad opportunities for Japanese university students.
"The American higher-education system is the best in the world,"
says Julia Ericksen, vice provost of Philadelphia's Temple
University. "The Japanese recognize that."

    So far, there have been no outright takers, but a few colleges
have negotiated deals that stop short of selling their
independence. This spring Warner Pacific College, a small
(enrollment: 400) church-affiliated school in Portland, Ore., is
expected to approve the sale of 49% of its physical plant to Amvic
International, a Japanese company that operates English-language
schools in Japan. The $6 million price tag includes an agreement
to lease the facilities to the college for 30 years and to make the
firm's president a regent of the school. The transaction benefits
both parties: Amvic's direct link with the U.S. college gives it
a valuable marketing tool back home, and Warner Pacific is relieved
of its crippling debt.

    Another church-affiliated institution, Phillips University in
Enid, Okla. (enrollment: 960), was approached last spring by Kyoto
Institute of Technology, which offered $24 million for the entire
school. Phillips' president, Robert Peck, refused. "Colleges are
not bought and sold," he says. "We're not Quaker Oats." But he was
under intense pressure to accept the offer from Enid's town
fathers, who in March 1988 paid $14.3 million to keep the campus
afloat, and now charge the university rent. As a compromise, Peck
let Kyoto underwrite a summer program for up to 50 Japanese
students.

    While the Japanese continue to seek academic footholds in the
U.S., a number of stateside universities are bringing
American-style education to Japan. In 1982 Temple University became
the first U.S. school to establish a branch campus in Japan. In a
new nine-story Tokyo building financed by a separate Japanese
board, some 1,600 Japanese students attend classes taught in
English by Temple professors. Last fall Dartmouth's Amos Tuck
School of Business followed suit with Japan's first-ever
English-language M.B.A. program. More than 40 other institutions,
including Texas A & M and M.I.T., are negotiating similar deals.
"The Japanese lack preparedness for globalization," says Chikara
Higashi, president of Temple University Japan. "These institutions
are an ideal means for them to overcome the language barrier and
other obstacles."

    Allowing Japan to buy into U.S. schools worries some American
educators, who fear this would be the ultimate technology transfer.
But the deals also provide vital links to Japanese business, a
chance for American students and faculty to be exposed to that
country's culture, and, not incidentally, a source of revenue for
U.S. institutions. "I see it as an opportunity," says George Smith,
assistant to the president at Warner Pacific. "There is no question
that higher education will be more international in the future."