Survey of university baseball players’ hometowns and post-graduation settlement trends

Abstract

Japan’s total population peaked at 128.08 million in 2008 and has continued to decline since then. In Niigata Prefecture, many people move out of the prefecture to go to university or to find work after graduation, and the total prefectural population peaked at 2.49 million in 1997 and has been declining ever since. Niigata Prefecture has put in place various measures to curb the population outflow and promote migration from outside the prefecture, and universities in the prefecture are likely to accelerate their efforts to curb the outflow and encourage students to settle down in the prefecture after graduation by improving their attractiveness. As a preliminary step towards measures to promote the settlement of university students, a survey was conducted on the hometowns and post-graduation settlement trends of the students of the N University hardball club, which has one of the largest numbers of members among university clubs in Niigata Prefecture. Of these, 38.3% were from Niigata Prefecture. 75.3% of those from Niigata Prefecture continued to work or go on to higher education in Niigata Prefecture after graduation. In addition, 12.2% of those who were outside Niigata Prefecture had found a job or continued their education in Niigata Prefecture after graduation. In the future, we would like to conduct a survey of both in-prefecture and out-of-prefecture residents on the factors that made them “settle down” in Niigata Prefecture after graduation, and devise measures to encourage them to remain attached to Niigata Prefecture and “settle down” there after graduation. We would like to take these initiatives as the first step towards creating new value for the existence of university activities in rural areas where population decline is an issue.