New Perspectives in Science Education

Universities are subject to evaluation from a global perspective. It is pointed out that international relationship is particularly weak in Japanese universities. The authors have been analyzing the international relationship of universities, especially the role of researchers in those activities. In previous studies on interactions triggered by inter-university agreements, it is pointed out that the work of faculty members has a great influence. Our analysis is based only on open data to ensure objectivity. In this paper, we focus on doctoral degree guidance for international students and analyzed what kind of factors are affecting. As a case study, we selected Ehime University Graduate School of Agricultural Sciences which has a high proportion of international students. We analyzed student name, supervisor's name and dissertation title in 1120 theses. As a result, we confirmed that half of international students are supervised by relatively small number of faculty members. Furthermore, it turned out that the titles  supervised by such faculty members are in the limited field which can be identified with 10 characteristic words. In fact, there were decreases in the number of international students around 2009. It seems that this is due to a change in the circumstances of those faculty members.

Keywords: university, international students, guidance of doctoral degrees;

References