Japan started Friday tightening rules on the management of foreign student enrollments at educational institutions after a Tokyo university was found in 2019 to have lost contact with more than 1,000 students from abroad.
Universities and vocational schools are no longer allowed to accept foreign students unless their enrollments are properly managed under the revised rules, which are aimed at preventing educational institutions from recruiting students inappropriately and stopping them from working illegally.
The move by the immigration services agency comes after the Tokyo University of Social Welfare was found in 2019 to have lost touch with 1,610 foreign students in three years since the 2016 academic year.
A Justice Ministry ordinance on immigration has been revised based on the government's policy drawn up later in 2019 on measures to prevent recurrence, urging such schools to thoroughly manage student registrations, while it criticized them for easily accepting students who came to Japan for work.
Many of the students that went missing from the Tokyo university were so-called "research students," who were taking preliminary classes at the institution in preparation for advancing to a regular course.
In response, the agency decided to not grant student visas to foreign people studying the Japanese language as "research students" or "auditing students."
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