Photo/Illutration Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, second from left, addresses a meeting of the Council for the Creation of Future Education on April 27. (Koichi Ueda)

The Immigration Services Agency of Japan plans to expand job opportunities for foreign students graduating from vocational schools to secure qualified specialists.

Under the agency’s revised guideline, graduates from schools accredited by the education ministry will be eligible for similar employment opportunities as university graduates.

The agency aims to encourage outstanding foreign students to forge careers in Japan.

When job hunting in Japan, foreign graduates from universities and vocational schools often apply for a visa under the category of “engineer, specialist in humanities or international services.”

Eligibility for the visa generally reflects the relevance between the graduates’ study major and career aspiration.

The immigration agency’s guideline stipulates that a “flexible judgment” should be exercised for university graduates as they would be expected to have acquired broad knowledge on several fronts.

On the other hand, vocational school graduates, who are trained in skills pertinent to specific jobs and the realities of working in Japan, face a stricter requirement--to a “considerable degree” in principle--when it comes to the relevance between their studies and potential employment.

The agency plans to revise the guideline by the end of this year to give time to foreign students graduating next spring to choose their career paths.

Graduates from vocational schools accredited by the ministry will be assessed on a similar flexible judgment as university graduates.

The ministry plans to establish a new system to accredit vocational schools that offer high-quality education and certify them by the end of September.

Around 32,000 foreign students graduated from vocational schools in fiscal 2021, accounting for nearly half of all foreign students in Japan, according to the Japan Student Services Organization.

However, about 10 percent of them returned to their home countries or moved elsewhere after graduation.

In April, the Council for the Creation of Future Education, led by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, proposed improving the environment for foreign students with the aim of encouraging them to settle in Japan.

It set a target to bolster the domestic employment rate of foreign graduates to 60 percent by 2033 from around 48 percent in 2018.

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