Universities struggle to predict enrollment

The competition to pry open the gates to Japanese universities causes much joy and grief every spring, but it's not just students who are left pleased or peeved.

University officials in charge of admissions often have a bittersweet spring--depending on the results of their guesswork.

Each year, admission officials must try to correctly estimate how many of their successful applicants will actually enroll.

The only exceptions are administrators at top schools such as the University of Tokyo, where virtually every successful applicant enrolls.

Students usually apply to several universities, some to as many as a dozen. So schools, after calculating a possible "yield," inflate that number and offer places to far more, to account for students who will enroll elsewhere.

Estimate the number of enrollees accurately, and officials can relax. They will reap the appropriate number of students as well as an acceptable revenue stream.

But if their calculation proves wrong, disaster can result.

Too few students can mean a revenue shortfall. Too many equals an end to government subsidies, not to mention overcrowded classrooms.

Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto was among the unlucky ones this year. And that's because its new college was too popular--far more popular than its administrators guessed it would be.

The College of Life Sciences opened in April at the private university's Biwako-Kusatsu campus in Shiga Prefecture.

A total of 9,298 students took the entrance exam for the 280 seats available, or 33 applicants for each spot.

After much discussion, the college accepted 2,957 students. Their bet proved wrong. A total of 415 students --way too many--including those admitted by recommendation, actually enrolled.

It was 1.48 times the quota, surpassing the threshold for government subsidies of up to 1.4 times.

Beleaguered officials in early April appealed to students to switch to other colleges, including colleges of law or pharmaceutical sciences.

Eight applied, and all were approved.

This exceptional step was criticized, however, as lacking "fairness" with regard to admission procedures.

On April 15, the university defended the step as "appropriate," saying it was needed to ensure a good educational environment for its students.

But the next day, Ritsumeikan President Kiyofumi Kawaguchi retracted the comment and apologized at a news conference.

"The move could arouse speculation that it was only taken to avoid losing government subsidies," he said. "I deeply apologize."

For private universities, government subsidies are a major source of revenue along with enrollment fees and tuition. But the subsidies are not handed out to colleges or departments whose enrollments surpassed 1.4 times their quotas.

The rational is that too many students per class harms the educational environment.

Even after the eight students moved out, the life science college still had more students than the criteria; it lost more than 90 million yen in subsidies for the year as a result.

Many universities are having a hard time correctly guessing their intake. Their job will be even tougher from April 2011 as the ratio will be lowered to 1.3 times.

The 99% school

But one university is an envy of all the others. At the University of Tokyo, a national university and the nation's most prestigious seat of higher learning, there is no guesswork involved.

This year, the Liberal Arts type I category accepted 401 students to fill its quota of 401. Other departments made similar decisions. Overall, the university accepted 3,100 students, A stunning 3,087, or 99.6 percent, enrolled.

Keio University, while a very prestigious and popular school, still must be careful in estimating its intake.

Its faculty of law accepted 2.35 times as seats were available this spring.

At Waseda University, a top private university rivaling Keio, the situation is complicated.

Many students apply to more than one school within the university because sometimes the "Waseda brand" is more important to them than what they major in.

According to officials, Waseda decides on the number of successful applicants "by making rather rigorous predictions based on past entrance exam data."

But in actuality, it started several years ago to fill vacancies, if any, with those on the reserve waiting list. Currently, this method is being used by 10 of its 16 schools.

Hosei University officials, meanwhile, had 130 meetings to determine how many students it should accept for each of its 14 faculties based on past data.

It had learned a severe lesson the year before. Its new Faculty of Engineering and Design, which opened in April 2007, had accepted so many students it breached the government criteria for approval of a new department.

As a result, the university was forced to defer opening another faculty, on sports and health, originally slated for April this year.

Further complicating the process is the fact that its Faculty of Law, for example, selected applicants in four screenings.

This means the faculty had to decide how many students to offer places to from one screening even before it knew how many successful applicants from earlier screenings would actually register.

The job of precisely forecasting eventual enrollment is getting tougher each year, say officials at cram schools.

"An increase in the variety of entrance exams has made predictions more difficult," said Akihiro Tamura, an official at Sundai Yobigakko.

A survey by the prep school found that one student applied for 5.2 universities on average in the 1998 school year, but the number rose to 5.5 in 2003 and 6.0 in 2008.

Part of the rise is due to more schools allowing students to apply using only the results of the common national center test for university admissions.(IHT/Asahi: May 22,2008)