22: Failure of attracting US universities in Japan
Japanese local governments invited a lot of American Universities(around 30 to 40 schools) during the bubble economy between 1980s and 1990s. Unfortunately, only two schools are remaining until now. If those universities have continued to exist in Japan, they can play an extremely important role of Japanese university education system as one of the most competitive universities across the globe.
The reason of their failures is not to be admitted as a Japanese official University because many existing Japanese existing universities were opposed/aggainst to the idea. As a result, those handled under specialized schools in Japan, receive no diploma in university. In effect,graduates couldn't apply the entrance exams of Japanese major companies. Also most US universities had withdrawn from Japan. (Lately the situaion had changed in 2004 to be admitted as one of the Japanese official universities.)
Since then, other Asian countries like Singapore,China etc attracted some foreign countries' leading universities as a good partner of existing domestic universities and developed new university branches in their schools together. They could certify their subjects of affiliiated foreign unuversity as one . The level of Asian countries universities have dramatically improved because domestic universities have done their best to catch up with forign country's education systems and high level subject contents.
From now, it was ranked 26th as National University of Singapore around the globe, 42nd in Peking University in China and 44th as University of Tokyo in Japan in 2016 (by Times Higher Education).
Japan should better attract foreign countries' universities again agressively as a country, taking advantage/learning from failure. Otherwise, college education system in Japan might continue to slump further for more than 20 years.