Japanese – the second language for FPT University

Why Japan?

Vietnam software exporters are aiming at two big international markets: the US and Japan.

According to a cooperation feasibility study by Vietnam Software Association (VINASA), the US is the largest international software outsourcer, nearly 40%. However, the US is currently India’s lucrative market – Vietnam’s direct competitor in international software outsourcing. With a large high-quality IT workforce, fluent in English and cheap labor price, India is truly a major competitor for Vietnam in this lucrative market.

Experts have point out that Japan is also a very promising market and is the main hope for software exporting companies in Vietnam. Also, Vietnam is one of Japan’s most sort after market with advantages in: cultural symmetry, geographic proximity, political stability, and more importantly a large, young, high quality, and cheap workforce.

In a recent press conference, Mr. Phạm Tấn Công, General Secretary of VINASA, said: “The Japanese embedded software industry alone lacks about 70 thousand engineers... Vietnam – Japan IT cooperation potentials is very high. However, this cooperation depends mainly on Vietnam’s ability to deliver”.

FPT Software – future workplace for FPT University students – have always been an important partner for top Japanese and international corporations such as Fujifilm, Panasonic, Hitachi Soft, Sanyo Electric... This demand will surely grow in the future and is a large opportunity for Vietnam’s software industry. It also poses a problem that needs to be solve for Vietnam’s IT training industry in general and FPT University in particular, that is the low quality and quantity of capable IT workers, especially their language skills.

Japanese market demand: Language is most important

Reality has proven that technology has never been a big problem for Vietnamese IT engineers, but language skills is a different story.

Foreign languages is a large barrier to domestic companies when working with foreign partners, especially Japanese – an uncommon and difficult language.

Currently, beside Foreign Language Specializing High School and FPT University, no other training institutions have instituted Japanese into the curriculum, further aggravating the shortage of IT engineers fluent in Japanese.

Software outsourcing companies for the Japanese market disclosed that the requirement for a programmer is a minimum of 2.5 kyu, while Vietnam only has about 100 individuals that has achieved 1 kyu – the highest Japanese fluency level. Also, not everyone who is fluent in Japanese wishes to go into IT and vice versa.

This situation have caused many software outsourcing companies in Vietnam to invest huge sums into the training of Japanese for programmers, with little return on investment due to the short training time and the lack of systematic training.

Japan is a demanding market, requiring not only capable IT engineers but also engineers fluent in Japanese, knowledgeable about culture, and Japanese work code. Most Japanese companies do not use English and require their partners to communicate in Japanese. Beside FPT Software, very few other IT companies have IT engineers fluent in Japanese.

FPT University teaches Japanese: Following the trend and opening the future

Chief Editor of Japanese Nikkei Newspaper, Nhật talk about
Japanese IT industry with FPT University students

As a member of the WTO, Vietnam is a dynamic and potential market, attracting huge FDI flows, notably from Japanese IT companies. In view of this investment wave, FPT University has started teaching Japanese as a second language in its curriculum to meet the scarcity of IT workers fluent in Japanese.

Considered to be the training ground for FPT Software personnel, FPT University consider foreign languages, notably Japanese to be the key to success for its graduates.

FPT University have also become affiliate with many Japanese universities, forming scholarship grants and working relations with many Japanese companies for the bright future and work prospects of its students in one of the most modern and industrialized countries in the world.

Currently, FPT has 9 international cooperation agreements with worldwide universities, of which 4 are Japanese: Kyushu Technology University, Shinshu University, Aizu University, Wakahoku University.

FPT University recently participated in a study tour led by FPT Corporation’s Trương Gia Bình to Japan concerning strategic financial and training partnerships. The tour aimed at learning from the training experiences of Japanese universities, finding cooperation opportunities in Japanese training and learning... Most importantly, the trip has provided FPT University future graduates with on-job training opportunities at Japanese companies.