Saitama University — Attraction in Saitama

I will write some thoughts on this university. As always, I will try to be objective but leaving a low score review for a university will always trigger some tribal response from alumni. Sorry in advance for anyone that I antagonized. I have no ill feelings toward the students or your hard work in entering this school.

As for myself, although I am not a PhD degree holder, I do have a lot of experience dealing with universities and research for various reasons and many members of my family are faculty of universities so I think I am entitled to comment a thing or two.

I won’t comment on the quality of education except that from a person who studied one of the natural sciences(理系), the university ranks somewhere around 1000th to the 1200th in the world, so I guess you can say it is... not very good by academic standards. I am not too familiar with the liberal arts field(文系) but I think there is no way to quantify the amount of academic output there so it won't be a big problem if you're a bunkei. Anyway it’s no Ivy League, Oxbridge or Tokyo Kyoto University by any means so it doesn’t make much sense to come here if you’re a foreign student aspiring to become a scholar of natural science unless you really like Saitama for some reason. Uh, the Japanese do call it Dasaitama, but I guess you can still like it. I remember one of the Japanese professors saying it is one of the best places in Japan to live. But graduating Saitama probably doesn’t land you a job and a house here anyway so....

A lot of the google comments are about how unhelpful the university staff (especially the security guard; but you should know that there are worse security guards in the world...) are. In my experience, the professors aren’t really that bad. I graduated an undergraduate course that was ranked way higher (consistently within the world’s top 100) than Saitama but the professors were a lot more... toxic (angry? abrasive?) than Saitama. I guess it’s both things, because the field was different and the environment is a lot more competitive to be a professor of a good university. However the university workers that are not the professors(職員 I guess? Not 教員) are total... err... insert impolite word... in Saitama IMO. For example, here is a part of an e-mail a certain Mr. F sent the foreign students, completely unabridged: 'Failure to complete this questionnaire may result in your status of residence and Certificate for Completion of Registration being revoked or preventing other international students from applying for a visa. このアンケートに回答しなかった場合、あなたの在留資格や受付済証が取り消しになったり、他の留学生がビザを申請できなくなる可能性があります。' So basically what this guy (yes his name was a guy’s name) was doing was threatening foreign students that he will revoke their student status. Nice work cannibalizing foreign students’ amiability against your own country! I can’t think of a more inappropriate thing for a university employee to say to his students to be honest.

Not only that, but the university sort of completely fails to communicate with you even on important issues like mandatory courses on plagiarism and even your tuition payment. There is no procedure, you have to find out on your own through their dumb portal. Too bad the dumb portal thing is very, very hard to navigate, to put it politely. The tuition is cheap... it was less than 1/3, closer to 1/4 of my school so I’m not going to complain but this is pretty much unacceptable behavior and if someone reported this to the press the university could take a lot of fire where I live.

I guess the verdict is that ‘you get what you pay for’. I still have no anger against the students and the teachers, but I am quite thoroughly disappointed in the university and wouldn’t really recommend the school for a foreign student. I mean, even graduate schools like Toyko/Kyoto aren’t too hard to enter if you’re a rikei (理系) student, and I believe all national universities have the same cheap tuition, so, there isn’t any scenario that I can think of that makes it advantageous for a foreign student to apply for a graduate...

Beautiful campus. Lovely greenery and picturesque areas within the campus. Excellent student facilities. It is a great place to study and have fun at the same time. The campus is the best during fall with its special Gingko trees. The faculty are very knowledgeable and the staff are very helpful to international students. The University bus stop is very convenient. The library is nice. However, the co-op store and cafeteria are...

The university provides an opportunity to pursue higher education in Japan, International Graduate Program on Civil and Environmental Engineering to aspiring overseas students. Which was launched by the Graduate School of Science and Engineering in 1992. It offers opportunities to highly qualified students from overseas to pursue graduate studies and do research in various disciplines of environmental science and civil...