Ian Robert Gibson    Department   Kyoto University of Foreign Studies  Department of British and American Studies, Faculty of Foreign Studies    Position   Professor
Language	Japanese
Publication Date	2010
Type	Academic Paper
Peer Review	Peer reviewed
Title	The ‘Global 30’　Project and Japanese Higher Education Reform: An Example of a ‘Closing in’ or an ‘Opening up’?
Contribution Type	Multiple author(s)
Journal	Globalisation、Societies and Education. London: Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
Journal Type	Another Country
Publisher	Routledge
Volume, Issue, Page	8(4),pp.461-467
Author and coauthor	Burgess、Gibson, Klaphake and Selzer
Details	The Global 30 Project, a new Japanese Government initiative that aims to upgrade a number of existing universities to form a select hub of elite universities for receiving and educating international students, has come in for considerable criticism. Using the dual concepts of kokusaika (internationalisation) and gurōbaruka (globalisation), this paper highlights the contradictory goals in a policy that combines a nationalistic 'closing in' with a cosmopolitan 'opening up'. The problems apparent in Japan's most recent attempt to reform higher education are argued to be the latest manifestation of a historical push and pull that can be traced back to the sakoku (closed-country) policy of isolation operated during the Edo period.