In the last decade of the 20th century, Japan lost many of the tangible and intangible assets it had built up since World War II. In particular, there was a serious deterioration in the quality of human resources. The second half of the 1990s saw a sharp decline in university students' scholastic performance and in the nation's scientific and technological levels. Most pundits blame this poor performance by university students on the Education Ministry's introduction of a more relaxed education policy, or on the fact that the declining birthrate in recent decades has caused a fall in the number of university applicants and therefore made it easier to pass university entrance examinations.

I disagree with these views. When I sat for university entrance examinations in the second half of the 1960s, the proportion of Japanese high school graduates going on to university stood at around 20 percent. The number of applicants for college enrollment was much smaller than today, and entrance examinations were much easier to pass.

Until the late 1970s, it was common for high school students to read masterpieces of Japanese and world literature, as they did not need to spend all their time cramming for entrance examinations. Some read the works of Marx and Engels; others mastered college-level mathematics. The intellectual level of university freshmen was very high. If they had a strong desire for learning, they would need only introductory classroom lessons; they could acquire deeper knowledge through self-education.