Committee Finds Higashiosaka College Showed Bias in Exchange Student Admissions; Applicants Introduced by Intermediary Company Allegedly Given Preferential Treatment

The Yomiuri Shimbun

21:00 JST, November 18, 2025

OSAKA — Higashiosaka College in Higashiosaka, Osaka Prefecture, showed improper preference in the administration of the fiscal 2025 entrance exam for overseas applicants to its junior college division’s Department of Social Care, investigation by a third-party committee at the college has found.

The committee determined that students introduced to the school by an intermediary company were preferentially given passing marks, an action it called “discriminatory treatment that cannot be regarded as fair.” It pointed out this resulted in two other exam takers having failed this exam and said that the college should consider retroactively treating them as having passed.

On Nov. 13, the college submitted the investigation report to the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry. It also made the report publicly available on its website on Monday.

According to the report, the Murakami Educational Institution, the school corporation that runs the college, signed a consulting contract with an intermediary firm that would connect the school with people who wanted to enroll.

The chief of the department held interviews with foreign applicants who were introduced by the firm before they took their entrance exams, though the college’s application guidelines do not mention this as part of the process.

In the interviews, the college would confirm that the applicants would be able to pay school fees.

The entrance exam was administered on a total of six occasions from October last year to March this year. In one of the exams, held in January, 39 applicants participated. The 27 test takers who scored 60 or higher out of 100 all passed the exam. However, among the eight who scored between 50 and 59, six, who were connected to the school by the intermediary firm, were preferentially marked as passing, while the other two were marked as failing.

The education ministry was informed of the affair in July and demanded the college submit a report about the situation.

The ministry decided that the college’s response to this request was insufficient and demanded it set up a third-party committee. Since September, three lawyers had been investigating the affair.

Mitsuo Nakamura, president of the college, told The Yomiuri Shimbun, “I shall discuss the response to be taken going forward with the education ministry, and inform the press of the outcome when it is appropriate to do so.”

The intermediary firm did not accept a request for an interview, saying that the official responsible for the issue was not in the office.