Completed applications should be submitted to the Graduate Office by 10:00 a.m., Monday, August 26, 2024 (JST). The final selection of candidates will be made by the Graduate Admissions Committee in the College of Education. Applicants will be evaluated comparatively on the strength of their application materials: undergraduate and graduate grades, letters of recommendation, standardized test scores, scholarly and professional activities, publications, and personal and professional goals. Applicants who advance to the final stage of the selection process will be interviewed by selected members of the Admissions Committee on Zoom. Final selections will be announced on or before Friday, October 25, 2024. If an appropriate number of qualified candidates can be assembled, doctoral classes will begin on Friday, January 10, 2025.
No, this will not be a factor in the selection process. Each candidate can apply for only one of the cohorts.
Yes, you can apply. The minimum admission requirement is to have a master’s degree from an accredited university.
It is preferred that the recommendations in support of your admission application come from academic recommenders. However, if you have difficulty providing three academic recommendations, it is preferred that at least 1-2 letters be from academic recommenders.
Yes. If you are a non-native English speaker, you must submit a TOEFL test score or an IELTS score that is less than two years old.
TUJ cannot sponsor Japanese student visas for doctoral program students as the program is considered to be a part-time program. You must have a resident, diplomatic, dependent, or spousal visa.
Yes. Temple University is fully accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.
Yes. If you are enrolled in the PhD online cohort and take all the courses online, you will complete all of your courses and earn your degree online from anywhere in the world. There will be no need to visit the TUJ Grad Ed Tokyo.
A total of 48 credits are required to complete the PhD program. Current tuition and fees (as of May 2024) are ¥267,000 for each three-credit course and ¥89,000 for each one-credit course. It will cost you approximately ¥4,500,000 for the entire program. Tuition and fees are subject to change.
You are required to pay the tuition each semester based on the number of credit hours you register for. For example, if you take 6 hours per semester, you will be required to pay ¥534,000 per semester. The annual tuition for the first year will be ¥1,602,000 (@ ¥89,000 x 18 credits). After the coursework, you will be registered for an independent study course, 1-3 credits per semester. As such, the tuition will be reduced.
Yes. Tuition and fees (as of May 2024) for both courses are ¥267,000 for each three-credit course and ¥89,000 for each one-credit course.
The doctoral program is a seven-year program. You should expect to spend at least four or more years in the program.
PhD Tokyo Cohort:
The PhD in-person format at the TUJ Grad Ed Tokyo is an on-site program. Students are required to commute to the campus and to physically attend classes there.
PhD Online Cohort:
The online format allows students to attend online classes anywhere in Japan or around the world. The PhD online format offers synchronous sessions. Synchronous online courses allow students to develop a learning community with their peers while maintaining a high level of learning engagement. Through our exceptional faculty here in Japan, the TUJ Grad Ed program will offer virtual access to the global expertise and specialized content incorporated into our PhD program alongside in-person courses in Tokyo.
Synchronous sessions are mandatory, just as if you had to attend an in-person class with a professor on campus. As such, time zone and date differences might need to be considered, depending on the location. If you are unable to attend a session, you will need to speak with the professor.
Class Schedule:
The schedule assumes that each candidate will take two 3-credit core courses (3-hours per course) each semester, including the summer semester, for the first two and a half years of the coursework period. Classes are offered in both the in-person format at the TUJ Grad Ed Tokyo and in the online format on Friday evenings (18:00-21:00) and on Saturday afternoons (14:00-17:00). Therefore, candidates will need to be available on both Fridays and Saturdays at these class time (Japan Standard Time, JST). Online classes require students to attend weekly class sessions via Zoom.
Yes, you can. However, the format of study can only be changed on a semester-by-semester basis.
Students in the Tokyo PhD cohort will have the option to complete their study (i) in-person at the TUJ Grad Ed Tokyo, (ii) online from anywhere in Japan or globally, or (iii) through a combination of both options.
Online PhD cohort students will have the option to complete their study (i) in-person at the TUJ Grad Ed Tokyo, (ii) online from anywhere in Japan or globally, or (iii) through a combination of both options.
Missing a core course in the doctoral sequence could cause problems. If TUJ continues to admit doctoral candidates in future cohorts, a missed course could be taken when it is offered to the next cohort. As such, every candidate should plan from the outset to take every core course in the doctoral sequence.
The central concentration both for coursework and for dissertations is language acquisition research. Within this broad area, there are many aspects of language acquisition waiting to be studied. Candidates will be encouraged to follow their own interests within the language acquisition concentration. TUJ dissertations have included studies of individual differences among language learners; studies of motivation in groups of language learners; longitudinal, ethnographic studies of learners in particular language programs; studies of the effectiveness of specific instructional approaches in the classroom; studies of curriculum design in language programs; studies of naturalistic acquisition of second languages (outside the classroom); studies of language testing programs; and studies of cross-cultural pragmatics and non-verbal communication among language learners. All previous TUJ dissertations can be found in the TUJ library.