More and more companies aim to employ international students, not only Japanese. Additionally, the number of university graduate students is increasing rapidly over the world, especially in Asia, because of economic development. So, Japanese students have to compete not only with Japanese but also with international students who study hard during university, unlike Japanese. If this situation continues in the future, Japan's country power will be getting weak.
You might want to tell these Japanese students to study more, but the reason why university students do not study is not only due to themselves, but also to the university and the company. Other countries' students study harder to get excellent marks because they need high grades when they seek jobs. On the other hand, Japanese companies do not care about students' grade when they employ them. Instead of this, they check what students spend college time doing; for instance, part time jobs, clubs or group activities and so on. Thus, students think that they need to spend more time doing other activities than studying and do not have to take class seriously because they do not have benefit even if they study hard. Similarly, professors think even if they prepare completely for class and provide hard classes, they also do not profit because most students do not study hard and there are few highly motivated students. The research by the Central Council for Education in Japan states that university class quality. Professors in Japan have many classes but they focus more on doing their researches then preparing classes. It cause that professors provide low quality classes and they can feel less the results of education (Kaneko, 2011). Consequently, students do not try studying in college because classes are not interesting for them. Hence, if companies want to know students' grades, they grudgingly ask students their extracurricular activities not their grades because a student's grade is not effective for deciding on an employee.