Japan bucks global trend toward highly-educated societies asia.nikkei.com

But Japanese students as a whole are not exactly keen to enter graduate study programs.
A similar trend was observed for master's degrees, with higher levels of education necessary to secure senior posts at companies.
In Japan, the number of people receiving a doctoral degree came to 15,000 in fiscal 2016, down 16% from 10 years earlier.
He has been somewhat surprised to note that "all senior workers around me at the new employer are doctoral degree holders."
In the U.S., 40% of doctoral degree holders are employed by companies and serve as the driving force of innovation.