Abstract
Japanese universities are faced with the crisis of globalization, which is defined as the transnational transfer of information, money, goods, and humans. As such, globalization refers to transnational migration at a higher educational level, students as customers and researchers as workers, in the global market. The globalization of Japanese universities can be measured using the following indexes: (1) migration of students. (2) migration of researchers, and (3) the degree of bilingualism (use of English).
Thus far, Japanese universities have been protected from the global academic market owing to the language barrier. However, they can no longer avoid the transnational competition that results in international ranking. It will bring about the rank order of market values of doctoral degrees in the transnational academic community that is more favorable to degrees from American and English universities than those from local ones, or in other words, domestic products. This leads to the colonization of academic knowledge. However, this does not imply that the closed domestic market is a better option.
How does this affect sociology? Sociology is an empirical social science performed with language; hence, it cannot go beyond linguistic and cultural boundaries. Although globalization is an inevitable trend, it does not imply the monopoly of Englishization. To the contrary, globalization will increase the value of local knowledge, where bilingualism plays an important role.
