Photo/Illutration Education minister Toshiko Abe at a March 11 news conference (Amane Shimazaki)

A scholarship program synonymous with international exchanges that has supported Japanese and American students for more than 70 years may have been disrupted by the Trump administration’s government efficiency review.

The education ministry said the temporary suspension of the stipend payments was due to a computer glitch and they would resume soon.

According to ministry officials, between March 3 and 5, Japanese students in the United States on the Fulbright scholarship contacted the ministry through the Japanese Embassy in Washington and other agencies, saying they received only part of the monthly stipend payments.

So far, 22 Japanese students have been affected. The Japanese and American governments are in charge of providing payments to the international students in their jurisdiction.

The education ministry confirmed with the U.S. Embassy as well as the Japan-U.S. Educational Commission, which is in charge of the Fulbright scholarship program, and were told technical problems in the sending of the money was causing the delay.

The ministry asked the commission to temporarily take over the task of transferring the funds. The process began on March 7 and confirmation was made that Japanese students received their stipends. The Japanese Embassy also informed the education ministry on March 10 that stipend payments would resume.

Students were already cutting it close.

Akira Sawada, 25, is in the doctoral program at the University of Minnesota. On Feb. 28, he received an email from the Institute of International Education that handles the distribution of the stipend.

The email said only a week’s worth of the monthly stipend would be sent because “State Department funding has been temporarily paused in order to facilitate a review of programs and activities.”

Since Donald Trump became president in January, his administration reportedly was moving toward cutting off government spending to research institutions. Japanese students in the United States raised concerns that the Fulbright scholarship would suffer a similar fate.

According to a March 3 statement by NAFSA: Association of International Educators, the State Department issued a notice on Feb. 13 about a 15-day suspension of disbursements for Fulbright and Gilman scholarships. The statement said that notification had not yet been lifted.

The NAFSA statement criticized the Trump administration’s actions and said the suspension “threatens the survival of study abroad and international exchange programs that are essential to U.S. economic and national security.”

It added, “Halting inbound and outbound exchanges shuts the United States off from a vital flow of ideas, innovation, and global understanding and influence, creating a vacuum that could easily be filled by competing nations.”

Sawada said he had been receiving about $1,600 (about 230,000 yen) monthly for living expenses, which he said was barely enough to get by. He added that he is still worried because there is no predictability in what the Trump administration might do.

Education minister Toshiko Abe said at a March 10 news conference that there had been no confirmation that Japanese students in the United States had been affected by the Trump administration's actions, but that the situation would continue to be monitored.

Named for the late Sen. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the Fulbright scholarship program has supported more than 400,000 students and researchers from 160 or so nations since its inception in 1946.

Japan joined the program in 1952 and so far about 6,700 Japanese have gone to the United States on the scholarship while about 3,000 Americans have studied and conducted research in Japan.

(This article was written by Amane Shimazaki and Jin Hirakawa.)

Related News