Tuesday, November 07, 2006

University Management Issues

I had my scooter repaired today. The carburetor and spark plug has been replaced, I even got a short Japanese lesson while waiting. The mechanic I have is awesome, really great guy. I'll tell you this much, Japan like many countries has many cultures. Some people might know of the polite, formal side of Japan; then there is the really energetic, "genki" people; there are even groups of very broad horizoned, free spirited people out here too. I've come to talk about something else inspired from attending a Micro-Mechanical Machine forum held in Sendai organized by my professor including people from all around Japan and some international people. Sadly, I pity the international people for coming out, because I fear they got little out of it and the organizers in Japan had missed the boat in having international dialog.

The forum held in Sendai was well attended-- an entire hall was filled suit clad people indicative of people from Japanese institutions, whether it be University or industry; there must have been close to 200 people in the hall today. Unfortunate (or perhaps fortunately) I missed most of the morning presentations due to having my scooter fixed.

The interesting presentation of the day was the panel discussion that occurred between professors including 2 from Tohoku University, Tokyo University, Osaka and one from the biomedical division of Hitachi Corporation. What transpired what not very encouraging about the state of Japanese University education.

The conversation that happened was about trying to develop research research initiatives in Japan to narrow the gap in good research published in Japan and also encourage better innovation in Japan. There was talk about putting together new programs to train people in design, there was talk about getting companies more involved with Universities and that they needed people with a broader range of skills. I felt that they totally missed the point in their discussion because having more programs for students is irrelevant. I scoffed at the idea of listening to these professors talk about things like "why don't we add in a design course?"

Though I didn't understand the full details of the conversations between the professors due to my limited Japanese skills, I do know for certain that the way they are trying to solve this problem is incorrect-- I am afraid that these people have been institutionalized for too long (whether it be in companies or in Universities). Innovation something that cannot be institutionalized as it would be just as absurd as institutionalizing inspiration-- how can you expect to just throw programs together and expect people to become inspired? Innovation, like inspiration is a culture that requires inquisitive and aware people; and from what I have seen so far, institutions here are terrible at fostering both characteristics.

I have attended classes where not a soul asks a question nor people understand the context of their information. In order for innovation to happen, you need people to ask questions and you need people to challenge the stats quo. If you have neither, it is for damn sure that innovation is not going to happen. The problem is not the lack of good programs... it's the education system and the institutionalized culture-- conformalists make for horrible innovators.

There's more to this problem actually, I've also found that there is poor communication between professors and students compounding the problem too that needs to be addressed... but it's 2:30 am already and I've burned 2.5 hours trying to piece things together. I've got a long list of notes I've taken left in my scooter (oops). I ought to wake up at 8:00 am today so I'll have to save this for another time.

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