By David McNeill

Tokyo

Japan has announced plans to standardize student-evaluation methods with universities in China and South Korea, in a possible first step toward a pan-Asian student-exchange program, the Yomiuri Shimbun, a daily newspaper, reported today.

Japan's ministry of education says the plan will make it easier for students in Asia's three largest higher-education markets to study abroad.

Universities in the three counties currently swap academic credits at their own discretion, the newspaper reported, but many colleges refuse to recognize foreign-based evaluation systems. A 2007 survey found that about 70 percent of Japan's state-run universities do not allow students with credits from foreign colleges to "enter the next academic grade," says the newspaper.

Japan is particularly keen to internationalize its moribund higher-education system. The government has announced a plan to triple the number of foreign students at its universities by the end of this decade; most are likely to come from China and South Korea.

The education ministry has also noted a post-2004 falloff in the number of Japanese students studying outside the country. The fall has been particularly sharp in the United States. According to the Institute of International Education, 34,000 Japanese students went to American universities in 2007, down from 47,000 in 1997 -- far fewer than, say, those from South Korea, which has less than half Japan's population.

The newspaper says the ministry wants to expand the standardization plan to cover universities in member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, as a prelude to a European Erasmus-style exchange program.