ABSTRACT
Statistically speaking, Japan has be come one of the most education-oriented nations in the world. Compared with other industrial societies. Japan enrolls exceptionally high percentages of the appropriate age groups at each level of education. Every student must take nine years of compulsory schooling; over 90 percent of those who finish compulsory schooling continue their education at senior high schools; and the majority of high school students would like to go on for further study. To accommodate demand. Japanese higher education has expanded to the point where it is well into what Martin Trow calls the transition age from its "elite" phase to its "mass" phase.
