In this paper, I examine the effects of the degree of college selectivity in terms of admission and college major on first job attainment, paying attention to the different experiences of men and women. Through better access to higher education, relative disparity within college educational attainment has increased. In this context, previous research has focused on the effect of college selectivity, while overlooking the effect of college major or social background. In addition, researchers did not examine the experiences of women. Using integrated SSM data from 1995, 2005, and 2015, I focus on college major and social background, paying attention to women with four-year university degrees. Results of the analysis revealed three points. First, while college selectivity affected company size as a signal of trainability, college major is seen as a signal of application potential for professionals. Second, the effect of social background on the first job is mediated by college major, rather than by college selectivity. Therefore, college major choice with regard to future job aspiration plays an important role in explaining intergenerational mobility in Japan. Third, there is a gender difference in the effect of college major on the first job. For large companies, men who graduate from the humanities suffer from a negative evaluation from potential employers, while women do not. In contrast, when considering professional jobs for graduates of the STEM fields, women are less likely to be hired compared to their male counterparts—even when graduating with the same major. To summarize, this study shows that college selectivity has a limited scope in determining company size of graduates' first jobs. It also shows that differences between college majors plays an important role depending on social status and gender.

Yujiro Motora (1858-1912) was the first professor of psychology at Tokyo Imperial University, and is known as the pioneer of Modern Psychology in Japan. However, his Ph.D. dissertation, titled “Exchange, considered as the principle of social life,” submitted to Johns Hopkins University in 1888, focused on social science and sociology. Moreover, he wrote numerous papers on sociology, social psychology, and social surveys after his return from the United States, and in the end, joined the important Japanese association for sociology in the Meiji period, “Society for the Study of Sociology (syakaigaku kenkyukai),” as one of its founders in 1898.

In this article, I will focus on an as-yet-unknown aspect of the sociological work of Motora, and try to reconstruct his concept of the “science of society” from the fragments of his voluminous writings. I will examine Motora's role in early Japanese sociology, in outline, and give an introduction to the idea of psychological sociology and empirical research methods based on statistics. In his incomplete conception, both experimental psychology and sociology, or the theory of sense and the theory of society, are situated within a comprehensive “science of society.” His stance functioned as a critical comment on mainstream sociology of those days, such as Tongo Takebe's curious contamination of his nationalistic sociology and Herbert Spencer's concept of society as an organism. Further, he endeavored to conduct the earliest stages of social surveys in Japan, and was influential on younger sociologists.

My research shows that, while Yujiro Motora was called a “pioneer of Japanese psychology” in previous research, his achievement should be evaluated as “one of the sources of Japanese sociology.”.

A public document titled “Reference Standards for Sociology Teaching and Learning in University,” examined in this study, was published by the Science Council of Japan in September, 2014. The document was compiled in collaboration with the Sociological Education Committee from the Japan Sociological Society and the Committee of Sociology from the Science Council of Japan.

“Quality assurance” of these “Reference Standards” is not simply aimed at improvement and standardization of the level of traditional education of sociology, but it is a guideline of the framework that explains what and how to teach in sociology so that sociology students can be assured of the process of acquiring knowledge and ability to survive in modern society. In short, it is to provide common standards for sociological education associated with a change of viewpoints.

These “Reference Standards” were formulated based on requests from two institutional sources: the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and the Japan Sociological Society. Their request was for an improvement of university education that can manage various changes in social situations in Japan and overseas. These “Reference Standards” were commissioned by the Science of Council of Japan and then clarified. As a result, they contain contradictory implications of control risks from the top and active reformations from the bottom.

The best utilization of such “Reference Standards” is left to sociology educators, who face challenges and work with students daily in the various fields of education. Therefore, based on these “Reference Standards,” active debates should be encouraged in order to rediscover the attraction of sociology and to determine the best possibilities for sociological education.

For this purpose, this study describes the formulation process, outline, evaluation, and further development regarding the “Reference Standards.”

Reference Standards of Sociology have various functions as well as acting as a guarantee of the quality of undergraduate education. They function to help departments (1) cope with globalization, (2) offer academic identification, and (3) prevent teachers from being isolated in educational situations. Their distinctive characteristics notably emerge in “generic skills” rather than “disciplinary specific skills.” Another characteristic of the standards is the coherence among sociologists without a specific definition of sociology, as well as the tendency to combine antinomies. Due to these characteristics, sociologists need to continuously rethink and improve the reference standards, and one significant way to do this is through comparisons and reflections of the process.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate some characteristics of “reference standards.” In doing so, we make the case for standardizing teaching materials in the subject of sociology at a national university, following the trend of globalization. First, we suggest that sociology textbooks should be brought in line with the “reference standards.” Second, as a need for “world-class standards of quality assurance” is being sought, we point out the importance of including the traditions and heritage of Japanese sociology for its teaching in Japan. Finally, we discuss not only the contents and examinations of sociology courses, but also the necessity of considering the learning methods that must be used in sociology courses.

This paper examines the role of sociology in teacher-training courses by reviewing the “Reference Standards.” Sociology in teacher-training courses stands between high specialty and general knowledge, and has three main roles: sociology for general education, sociology as a requirement for social studies education, and sociology for providing teachers with useful information. This paper asserts that although standardization of sociological education based on the “Reference Standards” is inevitable, what is questioned is the degree of standardization depending on the context of education; it further suggests the necessity of intervention so that sociology should be involved in primary/secondary education in order to showcase the raison d'etre of sociology.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the significance of the document entitled “Reference Standards in the Sociology Field” in relation to the quality assurance of college education, under the context of which the document was needed. In Japan, the quality of college education used to be assured by administrative systems such as “University Establishment Standards,” which are usually adopted before universities are established. However, due to amendments of these standards, the quality is now assured by self-inspection and self-evaluations conducted by each university after they have been established. The self-inspection/self-evaluation activities conducted so far have been limited to institutional certification and evaluation and corporate evaluation. The problem is that they do not offer evaluations for each educational program, and that its quality is not sufficiently inspected. In the future, it will be required for each university to conduct self-inspection and self-evaluation for each department, each faculty member, and each educational program. It is also expected that the self-inspection/self-evaluation of each educational program conducted by the faculty members themselves plays a central role in the quality assurance of college education. Similar to the reference standards in other fields, the main purpose of the Reference Standards in Sociology is to assure the quality of educational program in universities, and self-evaluation is expected to be conducted by each university.