Going Broke Universities – Disappearing Universities
The Going Broke Universities – Disappearing Universities is a ranking book about Japanese universities by Japanese journalist, published annually since 1993.
Although there are several university rankings in Japan, most of them rank universities by their entrance difficulties often called "Hensachi" or by alumni's successes. Especially, the Hensachi Rankings have been most commonly used for university ranking. From this view point, GBUDU is a typical ranking book in Japan.
The GBUDU ranks Japanese universities in terms of the entrance difficulty and selectivity. The author's main argument is that more selective universities have better quality, and generally guarantee students better future careers. Thus people should avoid least selective universities, and try to enter more selective ones as much as they can.
Methodology
The GBUDU rankings are made by the average scores of Hensachi estimated by Japanese major prep school Yoyogi seminar. Consequently, it can be regarded as a summary of the selectivity of Japanese universities.He prepared the following 10 scales to measure universities' entrance difficulties.
| SA | Most selective | 15 |
| A1 | Very selective | 46 |
| A2 | Very selective | 149 |
| B | Selective | 22 |
| C | Upper middle class | |
| D | Middle class | |
| E | Lower middle class / He defined it as the minimum level of universities that student should enter | |
| F | Lower class | |
| G | Lower class | |
| N | Least selective / The candidate universities for "Going broke universities" or "Disappearing universities" | |
| Total | 778 |