The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) has decided to give graduate students in science and engineering master’s programs studying the government’s “17 strategic fields” — such as AI and semiconductors — up to ¥2.8 million per year, starting next fiscal year and continuing for seven years. The program targets roughly 11,000 students annually, with graduate schools employing them as research assistants. On 5ch, opinions split over whether master’s programs are even necessary in the first place, and over the fairness of favoring science students.
MEXT has decided to provide financial support of up to ¥2.8 million per student per year to students enrolled in master’s programs at science and engineering graduate schools who are researching the “17 strategic fields” — such as artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductors — that the government is prioritizing in its growth strategy. The support will cover around 11,000 students a year for seven years starting next fiscal year. Payments will be made by having graduate schools employ the students as research assistants, with the goal of cultivating highly specialized talent.
When it comes to financial support for master’s students, systems already exist such as deferred tuition payment — where no tuition is charged during enrollment and repayment is based on post-graduation income — and tuition waivers, but support has been thinner than what’s available to undergraduate or doctoral students. The new support for master’s students can also be put toward living expenses, making it easier for students to focus on their studies and research.
Support for master’s students will be delivered through a “network” framework in which multiple graduate schools jointly run education and research tied to the 17 strategic fields. MEXT plans to designate 20 such networks in total. To qualify, a student must be enrolled at a graduate school participating in one of these networks and aiming to advance to a doctoral program, with final selection made by the graduate school itself.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
The policy of "welcoming talented international students to Japan, with a bit of financial support" has been running for about 50 years, and it got beefed up roughly 20 years ago. Only about 3% of the total get the generous treatment, and there are GPA requirements and the like too. Japan's been doing this kind of thing all along — why get hung up on such a trivial point now? As long as they contribute to Japanese scholarship and research, who cares about that condition?
For me it went the other way — if I hadn't done a master's, university would've just been for goofing off. What I did during those two master's years directly connects to my job now.
These days Japan has fewer PhD students than South Korea does, even though Japan's population is more than double. That's way too few.
Isn't it tough to get into a company's R&D department without at least a master's degree?
I don't get why humanities grads get called "elite" trading-house men or "elite" bankers and pull high salaries. They're just people who went into humanities by process of elimination because they couldn't hack math and science.
Hadn't thought of that angle. Sounds good.
Though unless your research topic gets fast results and you publish something genuinely groundbreaking, you might not be able to compete with the younger crowd headed straight into jobs afterward.
Just do your best out in the real world — it's a field where you don't need a fancy title anyway.
Everything's starting to run on natural language now, so being fast at reading and writing, and good at putting things into words and structuring them, is actually an advantage.
People with hands-on lab experience are well liked. Transfer in from a technical college (kosen) and go all the way through to grad school, and you're hugely popular.
Even hearing that, I still think "six years of education and that's all you get?" You could take an 18-year-old, put them to work, and train them up in a year. A corporate foot soldier doesn't need the kind of broad knowledge you learn at university. Doesn't need two measly years of master's research either.
"You could take an 18-year-old, put them to work, and train them up in a year" — no way, that's absolutely impossible.
If you've actually got people capable of training them like that, that's impressive.
That's an IT/CS thing, right? I used to think it's best to avoid that field since the tech goes obsolete too fast — but then AI showed up and now even other fields are getting unpredictable too. Still think it'll be fine for now though.
That IS the core technology behind AI, though.
This is exactly why "selective concentration" (pouring all resources into a few chosen areas) usually ends in failure.
Matsuo Lab? [a well-known AI research lab at the University of Tokyo]
>>148
That just delays them entering the workforce even more. Just have them work with a high school diploma.
Oh, that's rare — so there really are people out there who got that scholarship.
And yet a university degree is worth zero these days (´・ω・`)
"Credentials are becoming worthless" — top US engineer reveals what the people who "blow up" in the AI era have in common
"The era of the résumé is over" — as AI spreads, the rules for corporate hiring and talent evaluation are starting to change dramatically.
[Tsuruaki Yukawa, Editor-in-Chief, ExaWizards AI Shimbun]
Mobile view / Related info / Share / Post / LINE / Hatena / ExaWizards
"The era of the résumé is over" — as AI spreads, the rules for corporate hiring and talent evaluation are starting to change dramatically.
Aditya Agarwal — a partner at the US startup community South Park Commons, a former early Facebook engineer, and former CTO of Dropbox — shared the results of an interesting hiring experiment on X (formerly Twitter).
https://www.itmedia.co.jp/business/spv/2605/07/news031.html
It's up to ¥2.8 million a year at most, and once you pay tuition and buy materials, there probably isn't much room left.
It says it can also be used for living expenses, so it's presumably meant as research funding. That could let people do short-term stints at universities abroad. But then there's probably going to be a gap in research life between students who live away from their parents and are broke — forced to spend it all on living costs — and everyone else.
American universities are worth zero too, you know?
December 2, 2025, 20:00 — Education
Most Americans think a four-year college degree is "no longer worth the tuition"
A poll by major US outlet NBC found that two-thirds of Americans believe a four-year college degree "isn't worth what it costs."
https://gigazine.net/news/20251202-4-year-collage-degrees-worth/
Apparently the current US college enrollment rate is only in the 30% range.
Nobody's talking about getting a full degree. There's stuff like joining a summer program too, you know.
*This article is composed of excerpts and a summary from the 5ch (Breaking News+) thread: “MEXT to give science master’s students ¥2.8 million a year — targeting 11,000 students in the “17 strategic fields,” starting next fiscal year for 7 years…“
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