Regarding the Dec. 18 article "Students give job-hunting system a big F": Aside from the current economic situation, which may or may not affect Japanese students' likelihood of securing a job when they graduate — seemingly not if 95 percent are expected to be hired by the time they graduate — I tend to disagree that working-adults-to-be have it worse here than elsewhere.
Having been educated in both Japanese and American universities, I must say that the academic workload in the United States was much more demanding than in Japan, but I don't recall any of my classmates protesting that we didn't have time to study because we had to look for jobs. On the contrary, we probably had less time to look for postgraduate employment between balancing our academic workload, part-time or even full-time for jobs for some, extracurricular activities, etc.
While I admit that I'm not jealous of the "recruit suits," stuffy interviews and perhaps, in many cases, the unpleasant corporate environments that young graduates face here, I have no sympathy for complaints that their job-hunting detracts from their education. Even with the decline of the lifetime employment system, the choices made now will most likely have a significant impact on the rest of one's life and, as such, should be looked at as an important investment of one's precious time.
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