Japan's plummeting birth rate has sparked policy discussions about the challenges facing higher education institutions that could lead some to shutter.
The fertility rate in Japan, or the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime, reached a record low of 1.2 last year. Meanwhile, people aged 65 and over now account for 30 percent of the population, making Japan a super-aged society.
Asia's second-largest economy is increasingly anxious about the broader implications of this trend, which outgoing Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has made a national priority.
This demographic shift is already affecting university enrollment such that the Japan Association of National Universities has warned that the finances of the country's colleges are "facing a critical limit," The Japan Times reported on Wednesday.
A task force from the Central Council for Education, a permanent advisory body for the Japanese Education Ministry, has been holding monthly meetings over the past year to discuss how declining birth rates will affect the future of higher education in the country, the report said.
Last month, the council's subcommittee on universities approved a draft report from the task force predicting that the number of 18-year-olds in Japan will drop to about 820,000 by 2040, with the number of freshmen of this age expected to decline to 510,000 that year, down from 2023's 630,000.
The draft report said 53 percent of private universities were already struggling with insufficient numbers of applicants—particularly in rural areas, which have been especially hard-hit by the demographic crunch. "Maintaining a healthy enrollment scale is unattainable if the current focus on 18-year-olds remains unchanged," the task force said, The Japan Times reported.
The group recommended that universities broaden their recruitment efforts to attract more older adult and international applicants. However, the draft report cautioned that enrollment shortfalls and bankruptcies could still await some institutions.
"If the situation is left unattended, some geographical areas may end up without any universities," an Education Ministry official said, according to the Japan Times report. "We want to encourage everyone to think about the fundamental purpose of universities."
Newsweek has contacted the Japan Association of National Universities and the Japanese Education Ministry with written requests for comment.
Japan's population, which peaked in 2009, stood at 124.89 million at the beginning of this year.
National and local governments have introduced a bevy of measures to try to reverse the decline, which Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi previously warned could become irreversible by the 2030s. These measures include increased spending on childcare and reforms to immigration laws in an effort to retain some of the more than 3 million foreign nationals living in the country.
Neighboring China, Taiwan and South Korea are facing similar challenges amid their own declining fertility rates. In 2023, they recorded rates of, respectively, 1.0, 0.85, and 0.72.
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