(Continued) New Study Abroad Situation: Recommendations for Study Abroad Online... Free Speech for Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere! Free or Affordable Tuitions

Cover photo: The Future of Learning and Development | SCTE from

The pen is mightier than the sword!

Looking at the current geopolitical situation, the shift of education to online platforms will likely continue.

A continuation of "New Study Abroad Situation: Recommendations for Study Abroad Online (Part 1)" and "New Study Abroad Situation: Recommendations for Study Abroad Online (Part 2) --- Pursuing Personal Interests While Respecting Others |".

Of course, face-to-face education is undoubtedly better. However, looking at the global situation as of June 2025, online education is becoming its last resort/its only choice.

Everything real is skyrocketing in price; the educational sector and the middle class are giving up.

Just as we use the term "real estate" for physical land and buildings, face-to-face education conducted in physical buildings is "real education." Now, real things—real estate, food, and even real education—are skyrocketing in price. As a result, as the number of homeless people increases in our streets, the number of people unable to receive an education is also surging! This is another rapid increase in what I call "eduless"! To escape this miserable situation, one needs (university) education. To achieve that, one needs to settle down and have an address. However, to get a settled address, one needs a job, but to get a job, one needs (university) education. It is truly a textbook Catch-22 trap. Yes, the homeless and the "eduless" are trapped in a vicious cycle of Catch-22.

Harvard University's tuition for 2025-2026 is approximately $61,000 (x140 = 8.54 million yen), an amount that even middle-class households cannot afford. Even with the measures mentioned in my other article, "Harvard University's Full Tuition Waiver for Households with Annual Income Under $200,000 (Approx. 30,000,000 Yen)! Plus Living Expenses Provided for Households Under $100,000 (Approx. 15,000,000 Yen)! Implemented for the 2025-2026 Academic Year", it does not provide a fundamental solution. That is only possible because of large donations, and the vast majority of the 4,000 universities in the U.S. cannot do it. The very fact that such disparities exist in higher education is a serious problem. Students attending these universities are burdened with large student loans. According to Student loan debt in the United States - statistics and facts | Statista, the total amount of student loans in the U.S. reached $1.77 trillion (x150 yen = 265.5 trillion yen) as of 2023! It is an unbelievable amount!

What does it mean to teach, learn, and create? What does a certain anecdote in the Bible imply?

If we are to uphold "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)" and aim for the pursuit of Truth (Veritas), we must first keep tuition at an affordable level and make it accessible to everyone. A university is a place to teach, learn, and develop various insights. While teachers do the teaching, there is much to be learned from students as well. Students also teach one another. While students do the learning, teachers sometimes learn from students too. Peer learning among students is an everyday occurrence. In this way, new knowledge is created. That is what a true university should look like.

At its core, the knowledge provided by universities belongs to people of all times and places; it is, so to speak, the shared property of humanity. Of course, some knowledge belongs to individual universities. However, even that did not emerge suddenly; it is based on knowledge from all times and places.

It may be an extreme way of thinking, but perhaps we have reached an era where we should reconsider the very act of universities charging tuition to students? Especially when it is skyrocketing like this!

American Ivy League schools like Harvard originally started as Puritan seminaries. The university campus was an extension of the church. As a Christian, one anecdote from the Bible remains in my mind. It is the anecdote written in Luke 19:45-46.

And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, "It is written, 'My house shall be a house of prayer'; but you have made it a den of robbers."... Jesus entered the temple and, while driving out those who were selling things there, said, "My house shall be a house of prayer! But you have made it a den of robbers."

Harvard founder John Harvard was a very devout minister. What would he say if he saw Harvard's high tuition now? Those who were selling things in the temple were selling items like doves for offerings to the Jewish God. This was in accordance with the religious customs of the time and did not constitute a crime. However, the act of selling (likely at high prices) to make a profit took center stage, and it likely hindered the believers who came for the original purpose of prayer (learning). There must have been poor believers among them who could not even afford the offerings. If we replace "house of prayer" with "house of learning" and apply it to today's universities, what kind of metaphor would this be?

This is strictly my personal opinion. Harvard University is also doing its best to improve this. Harvard is a global leader, and I hope it will take this reversal as an opportunity for improvement and take the lead in improving the current state of higher education worldwide. Otherwise,

Will they find a way out by developing inexpensive online education?

The only realistic solution might be free online education provided to anyone, anytime, anywhere. In fact, online universities are already starting to emerge here and there. One of them is the U.S.-accredited non-profit University of the People. I hear that tuition and learning materials are all free, excluding minimal administrative fees. Why is it free? It seems that retired former university faculty who agree with the mission are participating without compensation. They say it already has a 50-year history. I would like to investigate this. There are signs that such online universities will increase all over the world.

Is Japan holding a "time bomb" in the form of natural disasters, and is this the only option as a countermeasure?

Now, Japan is faced with another desperate situation. Natural disasters such as the Tonankai Earthquake and the Great Eruption of Mount Fuji, which experts predict will occur in the coming decades. According to the Earthquake Chronology (Edo Period: 1605-1868) | National Diet Library Great East Japan Earthquake Archive, there is a high possibility that a series of major earthquakes and eruptions will occur in succession.

If that happens, all infrastructure will suffer a massive blow, and economic activity will be hindered for a long time. We Japanese have experienced the importance of education firsthand since ancient times. The reason we were able to join the ranks of developed nations is that our education penetration rate was exceptionally high. What happens if that education stops? The educational environment will be devastated, causing major problems for the future. It will be too late after it happens. There is no time to wait.

Rapid adoption in underdeveloped countries like those in Africa due to geopolitical and economic backgrounds

In underdeveloped countries like those in Africa, many young people use power from solar panels installed at home to access online programs around the world using mobile phones and tablets.

Unfortunately, Japan is significantly behind. From elementary schools to universities across Japan, we should develop online programs now, and in case of emergency, we should utilize closed schools in areas with less damage to create online hub centers. At the same time, we should take this opportunity to encourage online exchange study abroad programs in cooperation with educational institutions around the world.

The author's attempt: "Project-based English Program"

The "Project-based English Program" that I developed during my active years allows all activities to be conducted online. I believe that universities that introduced it were able to transition smoothly from real to virtual learning environments without any confusion during the COVID-19 pandemic.

By the way, during my active years, I introduced the same system not only for English classes but for all classes I was in charge of. If students could not gather for class due to various reasons such as sports club activities or job hunting, they participated online in real-time or via recordings. Therefore, there were no absences. The principle is anytime, anywhere, for anyone. For details, please refer to the articles related to this program posted in my magazine, "Project-based English Program (PEP) | Yuji Suzuki N.Yuji Suzuki | note".

I uploaded another article, "I used to recommend studying in the US, but I stopped! What can you learn without the independence of learning? (Personal thoughts based on actual experience)", and this is the alternative. If there is a program that interests you at any university in the world that upholds the independence of learning, not limited to the West, you should take it. If I were 60 years younger, I would do so. Please also refer to the following separate article.

Many online programs are in English, but there are signs of an increase in multilingual programs using translation AI

You can't speak English? Nonsense! Young people, you have your mother tongue, Japanese, don't you? English-pivotal education and AI software are things of the past. Now, if you use online machine translation and AI software well, you can participate in any language. Furthermore, online programs that do not allow this are outdated. The future workplace is waiting for talent that can do this. The global world is a place where not only English speakers but speakers of all other languages gather.

You can see how nonsensical the argument for English as an official language is in this era. This is because a multilingual frontier awaits where speakers can demonstrate their own creativity and imagination in any language. Every linguistic society has its own valuable and unique information, and it is a marketplace where such information gathers. I don't want a marketplace that only sells apples. People gather because producers from all kinds of countries confidently display the products they have harvested. (Written on June 4, 2025)