[alephnerd]

> English is the international lingua franca

True, but this underestimates Japanese's prominence.

Japanese (and Korean) fluency is fairly important in much of ASEAN (for example, Vietnam and Thailand), as much of their leadership, rising executives, and rising academics tend to study abroad in Japan.

[KeplerBoy]

What's higher education in Japan like?

In Germany and Austria, for example, a lot of graduate level STEM university programs are taught in English, even when everyone in the room is perfectly capable of speaking German, just because the literature is English.

[alephnerd]

I'm not Vietnamese, but my SO is Vietnamese and used to do medical research in Japan as part of that ASEAN-Japan pipeline (and it's the same model in South Korea and Taiwan).

There are two types of ASEAN students:

1. "Students" - guest workers brought under the "Trainee" program who in reality are temporary guest workers cleaning toilets, gutting fish, manually harvesting strawberries, or working in hostess bars. They are treated similar to how Nepali and Bangladeshi migrant labor would be in UAE because these trainee workers in Japan lack legal support and often in debt to a broker in the home country.

2. Actual Students - brought as part of Japan's soft power diplomacy in ASEAN. They will study in a mix of Japanese and English or full Japanese (depending on the university). They will also be housed in dorms for international students. These students end up becoming civil servants, professors, and potentially business leaders.

Most junior and mid-level professors and medical leadership at top medical universities in Vietnam like UMP tend to be alums of these programs in Japan and SK.