Student Typology to Improve Undergraduate Education: Potential and Future Challenges to Japanese Freshmen Survey

Changing society to knowledge-based society and globalization, higher education in Japan have moved to universal stage and faced cutting budget and decreasing the pool of traditional students. These are circumstances we have to provide the good quality of undergraduate education for diverse students who live in 21st century. In this study, first I overview the evolution of student typology in higher education studies in Japan and America. Second, from JFS2013 that is one of the JCIRP student survey, I provide two student typologies: Kaneko typology and Astin typology. The JFS has potential to build student typologies which aim to improve undergraduate education. These student typologies would be tool to check the policies about admission, curriculum, and degree of higher education institutions, and guide them toward better education practices. It is also, however, a future challenge to construct student typologies or profiles based on engagement or learning outcomes.