The Office of International Affairs (OIA) is pleased to invite you to an April 25 talk featuring Dr. Hiroshi Ota, Professor and Director of the Global Education Program at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo and Visiting Scholar, Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University.

Dr. Ota will speak about developments in higher education in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Higher education in this region has undergone significant changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical risks, geoeconomic tensions, and demographic issues. These issues affect internationalization policies and practices of higher education in East Asia.

Please email invpia@lehigh.edu to RSVP or with any questions.

Governments in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan have positioned the internationalization of higher education, especially in attracting international students, as a high-level policy and have launched a series of international education projects. However, as Dr. Ota will discuss, these initiatives often do not carefully consider the situation and reality at higher education institutions.

Additionally, their internationalization policies are not well coordinated with other higher education-related policies, according to Dr. Ota. Thus, these problems have often led to unintended consequences, showing gaps between government policies and HEI's practices. This talk will attempt to analyze these issues, including relations with China, from multiple perspectives.

Dr. Ota’s research primarily focuses on higher education policies and practices related to internationalization and international student mobility from a comparative perspective. He has more than 160 publications in Japanese and English, including 30 book chapters published by Springer, Routledge, SAGE, and Multilingual Matters.

Dr. Ota serves as a vice president of the Japan Association of International Student Education (JAISE) and a board member of the Research Consortium for the Sustainable Promotion of International Education (RECSIE). In addition, he is a visiting researcher for the Japan Student Services Organization (JASSO), a government agency that supports and promotes international education, and a visiting professor for Tohoku University.