Alongside Temple’s Main Campus surpassing its enrollment goal for 2024-25, its satellite campus in Tokyo enrolled its highest student count in its 42-year history during the Fall 2024 semester.
Without an enrollment decline from the COVID-19 pandemic or prominent financial concerns, TUJ was also able to expand its reach to Kyoto and improve its full-time and study away programs.
“People are seeing quality, excitement, the dynamic environment, the low costs, the flexibility and the desire to be here in Japan,” said Temple Japan Dean Matthew Wilson. “I think the internships and different opportunities have come together to help, and it’s exciting to be able to open a new location [so] everybody that comes to Japan, now you can do Kyoto and Tokyo with us now.”
Temple Japan enrolled almost 2,600 students this fall semester — doubling in size during the last four years, and tripling across the last 10. Temple Rome, the university’s other abroad campus, had around 720 students attend in 2023.
TUJ also expanded its bachelor’s degree offerings to increase full-time enrollment for both Japan admittances and study abroad students. It has 12 full time bachelor’s programs, where students can study and graduate completely in Tokyo, or study at other campuses like the new TUJ campus in Kyoto in the future.
During the last few years, TUJ has specifically invested in improving its computer science and hospitality management programs.
“The Temple community is so blessed by those who walked before who had the foresight to not only get this campus off the ground but keep it going while other American universities were pulling out of Japan,” Wilson said.
With the growth, TUJ has tried to accommodate more students with more facilities. It opened a new three-story facility at the beginning of the semester with a fitness center, classroom, laboratory and faculty offices.
“I think TUJ is growing slowly, I just think we have a lot of students for the space,” said Sonja Stevens, a sophomore communications major from Sweden studying at TUJ. “We don’t have enough space, and I know we bought some new buildings around the area. We got a little fitness center, for example. That’s new, but it’s still pretty small.”
Enrollment has been on a steady increase without being brought down by the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects in Japan, Wilson said. Since the country closed its borders for the majority of the early 2020s, TUJ was able to mitigate the effects of lockdowns or shuttering their doors. Instead, they saw a distinct rise in enrollment with their online class offerings and less required safety protocols due to less COVID cases, Wilson said.
Out of the nearly 2,600 students enrolled this fall, about 150 of those are short-term study abroad, meaning they will complete either a semester or a full year at TUJ. Forty percent of those students are from Main Campus while the other 60% are from other U.S. institutions.
“Being a part of the Emerging Leaders program, it definitely stood out to me when I joined and luckily I got in,” said Y’Jazzmin Christopher, a freshman psychology major completing all four years at TUJ. “It just created a whole different family and also a lot more opportunities for me.”
Some students joined Temple Japan because of the international connection opportunities offered with Main Campus and Temple Rome.
“I was looking into both campuses [in Europe and Asia] and I was like, this is a perfect time to go abroad,” said Jasmine Mehta, a junior philosophy and political science major studying abroad at TUJ. “They offer my major, a lot of classes and it also just gives me an awesome experience to just try out new cultural things, explore, visit places I’ve always wanted to go.”
Social media was another large enrollment campaign for the university — the TUJ TikTok account has almost 160,000 followers and 4.8 million likes on its platform, largely outpacing Main Campus’ 8,800 followers.
Wilson said that some students were introduced to TUJ just because of social media outreach, remembering one student from London who visited and wanted to attend TUJ just because of its online presence.
While Main Campus was able to start bouncing back from its enrollment decline during COVID, Temple Japan hopes to continue growing. Wilson plans to work with more prefectures to get internships for TUJ students and bring a more international perspective in his tenure as dean.
“When you think about studying overseas, people gravitate to Europe,” Wilson said. “I think out of the United States it’s about two-thirds of students. It’s because it’s familiar, easy and doable. [But] Japan is also incredibly doable and life-changing.”
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