With its 40-year-old Tokyo campus growing, Temple will open a new site in Japan

While many American universities are struggling with enrollment loss, Temple University’s more than 40-year-old campus in Tokyo is growing, and not just in enrollment.

The university has announced that it will open a second site in Japan in January, this one in the ancient city of Kyoto, known for its landscapes and architecture and recently ranked the best big city in the world by Conde Nast Traveler.

“In an educational environment where the news typically has been universities closing shop, even mergers, it really is a shining moment to have us be able to open another location here in Japan to a lot of fanfare, a lot of excitement,” Matthew J. Wilson, dean, CEO, and president of Temple University Japan, said in a Zoom interview from Kyoto on Friday.

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It was an improbable proposition when Temple launched TUJ in 1982. At the time, the university was largely a commuter school with no major offered in Japanese or even an Asian studies curriculum, according to A History of Temple University Japan. The school did, however, run an intensive English language program and often enrolled students from Japan.

Looking to make its mark in international education, the university took the advice of a local businessman who suggested the school could provide much-needed intensive English-language instruction in the country.

It went on to become the first U.S. university to offer academic degrees in Japan and remains the only U.S. university there that offers full undergraduate and graduate programs, according to the book by Richard Joslyn and Bruce Stronach, two former TUJ deans.

The campus’ early journey was at times tumultuous — including initial reluctance from the government and the loss of hundreds of thousands in funds from one of its early partners — and many U.S. colleges that have tried campuses there have since left, finding Japan’s intricate policies difficult to navigate and losing financial support after the real estate and stock market struggles of the 1990s. It wasn’t until 2005 that the Japanese government recognized branch campuses of foreign universities, allowing them to sponsor student visas, Wilson said.

» READ MORE: Applications are up at Temple and other local colleges. A big bump comes from international students.

But Temple’s campus has held on, and in recent years experienced a growth spurt, going from 1,000 undergraduates in 2016 to 2,240 now, much of that increase coming over the last few years. (That’s in contrast to a 9.2% decline in Temple’s overall enrollment over the last year to 30,530 students. Enrollment has fallen 22% since 2019.)

Temple Japan was one of the earliest universities to reopen during the pandemic, which did not hit Japan as hard as it did some other countries, including the United States. That greatly raised the campus’ visibility, Wilson said.

“During the pandemic, we were the champion of opening Japan for the purpose of bringing students in,” Wilson said. “I was being quoted around the world.”

In addition, the university has launched an emerging leaders program and other new undergraduate programming, formed more relationships with local governments, and improved marketing.

The university has earned high marks from the Japanese government.

“I applaud Temple University for its dedication to promoting global understanding, cross-cultural exchange, and a world-class education in English,” Noriyuki Shikata, cabinet secretary for public affairs in the prime minister’s office of Japan and a longtime observer of the Temple campus, said in an email to The Inquirer.

The Tokyo campus, which occupies two buildings and rents a growing number of smaller spaces nearby, educates students from 70 countries, with about 36% from Japan and 34% from the U.S. Among them are about 200 study abroad students, roughly half of them from Temple and the rest from other U.S. universities. International business, communications and art are among its most popular majors.

In addition, it enrolls about 250 graduate students in business, law and education, and 1,800 more non-degree seeking students, including some students from Japanese universities there for English-language instruction, Wilson said.

Operating on a $35 million budget, the university is fully tuition-funded and does not draw from Temple’s main budget, Wilson said. In fact, the campus contributes about $2 million in management fees each year, he said.

Undergraduate tuition runs $12,500, cheaper than Philadelphia’s main campus, where in-state students pay base tuition and fees of $18,947.

That’s definitely a perk, says Soren Dickson, 21, a junior from San Antonio, Texas, who is TUJ’s student body president. It’s also relatively crime-free, unlike the North Philadelphia neighborhood surrounding Temple’s main campus, which has struggled with safety issues in recent years.

“It’s worlds of difference,” said Dickson, who is working toward his bachelor’s in international affairs with a certificate in Japanese and hopes to pursue a career that furthers the U.S.-Japan relationship.

But what attracted him most to Temple Japan was the opportunity to study abroad in a culture he knew little about. He found out about Temple through his older sister, a violinist who was attracted to its well-known music program. His twin sister attends Temple’s Philadelphia campus now.

TUJ was the first school he ever attended when he arrived in fall 2022, since he had been homeschooled. He found a tight-knit community, with its small classes all in one main building. Professors care deeply about their students, he said.

“It was for the first time coming to a place where it felt like my difference [being homeschooled] was celebrated,” Dickson said. “That was a huge turning point. It changed my life. It has been everything I hoped for and more.”

For Toshimasa Hatori, 23, a native of Japan, TUJ offered an opportunity to get an international education while remaining in the country.

“I’ve always wanted to study abroad, but with safety and financial concerns in the U.S., it was best to find [an] alternative ...,” he said in an email.

He got his international business studies degree there in 2022 and now works for a New York-based financial institution in Japan.

Sheri Lambert, an associate professor of marketing who has worked at Temple for seven years, arrived at the campus a month ago to teach for the semester. She was struck by the energy, engagement and commitment of the students, traveling in some cases hours to get to her 8:30 a.m. introduction course on marketing. She has seen that same enthusiasm among some of her higher-level classes on Temple’s main campus, but not typically in introductory courses.

After she taught her first three-hour, graduate student night class a few weeks ago — delivering a lecture on consumer buyer behavior while struggling with jet lag — students stood and gave her a standing ovation.

“I’m sure I looked dumbfounded,” said Lambert, who previously worked for a large global market research firm. “I started clapping, too. I said, ‘This is for you guys. You made the class.’ It made me feel so good about what I’m doing.”

Wilson first visited the country as a teen doing missionary work for his church and fell in love with the “family-oriented” and “respectful” culture, he said. He married a Japanese woman and they eventually returned to the United States, where he completed his bachelor’s degree.

With aspirations to become an international lawyer, he enrolled at Temple law school and spent some time on the Japan campus in 1997, later becoming a law professor, general counsel, and associate dean there from 2003 to 2009.

After stints at several U.S. universities as professor, dean and president of two universities, the University of Akron and Missouri Western State University, Wilson returned to TUJ as dean, CEO and president in September 2020.

He has sought to strengthen ties with the main campus, this year sending 30 students a semester from TUJ to study there, up from only a few in previous years, he said.

Wilson sees more opportunities at the new site in Kyoto, the eighth-largest city in Japan and home to Nintendo. He anticipates an enrollment of 125 students to start, but there is room to grow to 700 or 800, he said.

It may not be the last addition. Wilson said both Kobe, Japan’s sister city to Philadelphia, and Nagasaki also have expressed interest, Wilson said.

“When I flash back to being a student here in ‘97 … the taxi drivers didn’t even know at the nearby station what Temple was or where it was,” he said. “We couldn’t even get Japanese universities to talk to us, let alone local governments. Now governments and city mayors are knocking on our door.”