Photo courtesy of Yonhap News

 

 

[Alpha Biz= Paul Lee] TOKYO, August 9 — The number of available seats at Japan’s private universities will decline in the 2025 academic year for the first time in 22 years, reflecting the country’s rapidly falling birth rate.



According to the Japan Private School Promotion and Mutual Aid Corporation, a special corporation under the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), private universities across the country have set their combined enrollment capacity for the 2025 academic year (April 2025–March 2026) at 502,755 students — a 0.2% decrease from the previous year, Nikkei reported. The last decline was recorded in the 2003 academic year.



Nikkei attributed the drop to universities suspending recruitment and to MEXT’s increased support for mergers and consolidations in response to the shrinking student population.



MEXT projections show that the number of university entrants in Japan will peak in 2026 before steadily declining, reaching an estimated 410,000 by 2050.

 

 

 

 

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