[Umihito]

Originally Posted by Sangetsu

It's rather obvious. The Nigerian doormen you see in Roppongi and Harajuku are not university educated, few have even high school educations. The Israeli food and souvenir sellers do not have degrees, and quite a few English teachers are also here without degrees.

Western foreigners make less than 1% of the foreign population in Japan, so it's easy to overlook those from Africa or other parts of Asia, and the greater part of the people from these places have no degree of any type. Some stay on special visa for service industry workers, others came as students or tourists, and are not in Japan legally (a few times a week a large bus full of overstayers leaves from the detention center in Shinagawa and heads to Narita to be deported).

As for the Nigerians, they are all married to Japanese citizens, and the same is true of many others. When I was at the drivers license center taking my driving test, most of the other test-takers were also married to Japanese men or women. None that I was aware of were unversity educated, a few were Filipino housewives, one was an American soldier with a Japanese wife, while others were dependents of mixed families.

True true, sometimes it's hard to remember how much of the foreign population of Japan westerners make. I made the mistake of assuming you meant Westerners exclusively in your post, sorry.

I don't know if you know or not, but in regard to the Nigerians marrying Japanese, are the marriages truly legit, or are they just scam marriages that some people try? If it's scam marriages, it just seems like such an un-Japanese thing to do (on the Japanese partners side of things of course).

And wow, I'd love to know how the English teachers manage to pull off coming over without a degree. I thought Japanese immigration were really strict with this stuff. Unless they came in via the 10 years experience route of course.

Originally Posted by acjama

Exactly how does formal education remove or prevent "life experience" from people?

This might be a little harsh to say out loud, but employers will always choose the one with knowledge and possible contacts of the field and concrete proof of a desire to improve oneself, rather than the one who simply claims undefined "life experience", most likely from a completely irrelevant field.

Originally Posted by WingsToDiscovery

I agree. I always feel like people who don't have a degree are always trying to lowball my education by saying their X amount of experience is worth more. And, people always treat the two as if they're mutually exclusive. Throughout my education I've held several different jobs and internships, both providing me with valuable experience relevant to my field of study, which has killed two birds with one stone. That's worth more than "life experience," as you said.

Yes, this is exactly the other end of the scale I was expecting to come into this thread, about claiming life experience is more important and how wanting a degree is too strict. Seems that they're in the minority though.

I've experienced it too, the whole lowballing my education, and I haven't even been to university (not sure what the American equivalent of a British college is, but it's only one step down from uni)! And yes, it was from someone who hasn't even gone that far, assuming she was going to become a millionaire businesswoman by basically... luck and 'street' experience.

Even if their life experience would be more useful than a degree, it'd be just too hard to pick the genuine people from that.