Highly Skilled Professional (HSP) – Universities added for extra 10 points
Let me take this up in my blog, though it should be known to many as it has been implemented back in March 2019.
This change aims to expand coverage of the world talents who is eligible for HSP visa application. Within HSP point system, extra 10 points are added in case an applicant has graduated from an university ranked within a MOJ university list. The list is made up of universities ranked within top 300 at least two (out of three) well-known university rankings. 13 universities in Japan were in the MOJ list.
The selection criteria has been revised and made less restrictive, as you see below, only for universities in Japan so that now 108 universities in Japan are in the list.
- Ranked in at least one of the three ranking sites: Quacquarelli Symonds (UK), Times (UK) or Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China)
- Granted in MEXT’s Super Global University initiative.
This change enables a world talent to apply for HSP visa, in case s/he has graduated from a newly added university in Japan and whose HSP point used to be 60 – 65 but now reaches 70 or more by adding the extra 10 point.
University ranking tends to be influenced by a geopolitical location where a ranking organization resides. Country distribution of universities for HSP extra point is looked like below for year 2018 and 2019. It is interesting to note that there is only one university is listed for India, Brazil and Russia even though number of universities in these countries are quite large. Their representation is obviously too small, when compared against 73 US and 35 UK universities in the list. This should be partly because the two of the three ranking sites reside in UK, making their ranking rather US and western Europe centric.
Link: MOJ List of Universities for HSP extra points (as of August 2019)