This chapter will look at how Japanese universities are ranked domestically. The key measure of internal rankings is the hensachi system, which first appeared in the 1960s as a de facto measure for scholastic achievement. From the mid-1970s onwards, hensachi increasingly came to be seen as the source of many educational “evils” in Japan, but predictions of its demise have proven to be premature—despite attempts to set up alternative domestic ranking systems such as by graduation and employment rates.

Introduction

There has been a huge market in Japan for many years which has played on showing students how they can improve what is known in Japan as their “hensachi” scores. Okamoto Masayoshi has suggested that greater control over one’s respiratory rhythm has a positive benefit on hensachi scores; Otani Masaru, a professor at Tokyo University, has set out how changes in dietary habits and the intake of appropriate nutrients, such as amino acids and vitamins, contribute to improved hensachi scores; Miyaguchi Kimitoshi’s “Miyaguchi method of memorization” supposedly can improve a student’s hensachi scores to such an extent that they can get into Tokyo University, the most competitive of all universities in Japan.

So, what exactly is hensachi and how and why has it become such an important concept in Japan’s higher education? In Japanese-English dictionaries it is often defined somewhat opaquely as a “deviation value,” and is essentially a “standardized rank score” which indicates a prospective university applicant’s position relative to her/his peers. An individual student’s hensachi is determined through mock entrance exams conducted by major supplementary education providers such as juku and yobikō. These providers publish the overall hensachi of students admitted to different universities and departments each year, so that a system originally intended to help applicants make decisions about where to apply based on their likelihood of success (by comparing their own hensachi with the previous year’s results) also generates a simple and transparent ranking of departments and universities based on their selectivity.

Since hensachi is not an officially condoned system but a mechanism developed by supplementary education schools to help students and parents calculate to which institution they should apply, there is some variation in the figures and calculations used.