The Japanese are disappearing from America's college campuses. Blame this spring's earthquake and tsunami, a sputtering global economy, and Japan’s graying population.
Japan's one-year decline in the number of students at US colleges and universities was among the steepest – a 14.3 percent chute. Japan is now No. 7 on the list of countries sending students to the US.
That decline was actually a bit below the previous year’s retreat of 15.1 percent.
Just over 21,000 Japanese are now studying at US colleges and universities– a steep drop from the heyday of the late 1990s, when a peak of 47,000 Japanese were on US campuses, giving Japan the first-place crown for foreign students in the US.
The earthquake and tsunami only deepened an economic morass that has more Japanese families thinking twice before sending a son or daughter abroad to study, some Japan experts say.
But for others, demographics are the main explanation for Japan’s continuing drop on the list of international students in the US. Japan is aging, and as a result there are simply fewer young people clamoring to study in the US.
