East Asian Studies / Asian Studies / Japanese Studies / Chinese Studies

Hello , this is my first post in TSR.

I am a Y12 student who will be 2021 entry for university. I have been researching degrees in East Asian Studies, Asian Studies and Japanese Studies. I was wondering if anyone could advise on:

The worth of these courses - are they actually good?
The future careers one could have with a degree in these courses

Many thanks

ToysInTheAttic75

Reply 1

teilchen

Original post by ToysInTheAttic75

Both Chinese and Japanese are good languages to learn though I personally would suggest Chinese will be slightly more employable as a language especially in the future - languages can lead to all careers business, politics, teaching, translation and languages such as Chinese have good employment rates - languages sometimes get a bad rep because overall the employment rates are low but you have to understand that some language such as Chinese Spanish and German are more employable than others which pull the figures down - I have applied to uni to study German and Chinese and I am very happy with that choice and all the research I have done suggest that it can lead to a good career- In fact the person I spoke to at Exeter uni said every single person in her Chinese class was offered a job before they graduated - a lot of them were even headhunted because they spoke Chinese - I hope this helps I am happy to answer anymore specific questions you have it’s actually quite a complicated topic language degrees so I might not have explained it well but I would say don’t listen to people if they say it’s a bad degree especially if they havnt done it themselves :smile:

Reply 2

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

The degrees are as good as any other degree for going into basically any non-STEM or clinical role. However it is dependent on you to undertake relevant work experience/placements/internships to make yourself competitive in the graduate market. Simply getting a degree, in any subject, is not sufficient (nor has it been for quite some time) to get a graduate job - unless you study medicine, in which case you are guaranteed a job if you don't fail the degree.

@Quick-use studied Japanese as part of their course and might be able to advise on how they found the experience.

Reply 3

ToysInTheAttic75

Ok thank you , thats great

Reply 4

Quick-use

Original post by artful_lounger

@Quick-use studied Japanese as part of their course and might be able to advise on how they found the experience.

Thanks for the tag. :love:

@ToysInTheAttic75

Languages are very highly sought after and eternally rewarding! :rambo:

At university, I did French, Spanish and Japanese. After graduating, I did some freelance interpreting in Japan while working at a private firm assisting medical and business clients with English translation. Now, I'm back to studying in the UK and am currently studying a postgraduate degree in International Relations and Diplomacy at Lancaster with the hope of eventually joining the British diplomatic service.

My friends who did a Japanese degree have gone onto the following jobs: working in immigration offices in Japan, working in local Japanese governments such as Fukushima, Beppu and Kyoto (one such example: https://rediscoverfukushima.com/), working at the consulate general (embassy) in Edinburgh, working for the NHK (Japan's version of BBC) in both Tokyo and London, investment banking, working in Japanese translation (environmental and video games), practicing Law in Japan, working at a local sake brewery in Okayama (https://www.originsake.com/?fbclid=I...0neClapyuUuqyY), lecturing at universities in Japan and the UK and so on and so forth.

My university friends who studied French and Spanish have gone onto working at the European Parliament, investment banking, tourism and so on.

When you study a languages degree, you don't just study the language. For example, during my undergraduate degree I took various modules on Japan-China foreign policy, international relations, politics, French immigration laws, Spanish journalism writing etc. What's more, regarding the language component of our degrees, there were modules consisting of translations of dense political documents, medical documents, historical religious documents, both classical and contemporary literary texts as well as journalistic articles among many others.

Although I don't regret studying languages at university, I might have considered studying something like Economics or International Relations alongside a language or two because recently I've realised that those are the fields that I'd like to apply my linguistic background in. That said, when I first applied to university I didn't know what I wanted to do, so in that sense I was a little lost because my degree wasn't focused on a specific career. But, the good thing was that languages can be applicable to many different sectors - they really are extremely versatile (if not, the most versatile out of all humanities/arts degrees).

Moving on, I might not recommend an East Asian Studies degree. You'll be forcing yourself to specialise only on East Asian history/politics and you won't be studying any of the language/s (not to a decent level, anyway). Language students will do the same as you (as well as the language) and History/Politics students will also be doing a similar degree, but they'll be able to choose modules from East Asia, Europe, Africa etc etc whereas you'll only be able to choose East Asian history/politics modules.

If you'd like to do languages, go for it. If you'd like to do languages + something like Law/Economics/IR/whatever, go for that too. If you're not sure at all, maybe consider a Scottish university where you study 3 subjects equally in your first 2 years. You can do 2 languages + another subject in almost anything. Gradually, you can decide to continue your degree with your 2 languages or 1 language + your other subject or just 1 language.

Originally, I remember thinking that I wanted to be an interpreter or a translator. Now, I'm pretty sure that I want to join either the diplomatic service or go into academia. :fluffy:

For more information regarding Japanese specifically and/or universities, look at this thread: https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6263250

It has information/advice from me regarding Japanese degrees and universities. If you have any other questions regarding Japanese or any language degrees or universities, let me know. :fluffy:

(edited 3 years ago)