Operations at dozens of colleges and universities across Japan have almost ground to a halt following Friday’s huge earthquake and tsunami, which has left swathes of the eastern Pacific Coast in ruins.
All six universities in Sendai, a city of about a million people located about 186 miles from Tokyo and near the epicenter of last week’s temblor, are struggling to recover from the disaster, which has damaged classrooms and crashed computer networks.
Tohoku University, in Sendai, held emergency meetings Monday to assess the damage and plan a recovery strategy.
“There is no serious structural damage, but people obviously have other priorities—making sure that loved-ones are safe,” said Akio Nishizawa, a professor of economics at Tohoku. “For the university, it’s a question now of checking that the buildings and equipment are structurally safe.”
Professors and graduate students have been told to stay away from campus. “My professor is stuck somewhere and can’t get back to Sendai,” said Hironao Itabashi, a graduate student at Tohoku. “The university is not allowing us into our labs anyway—it has been thrashed.”
Other colleges in the hard-hit Iwate and Miyagi Prefectures, in Japan’s north, have effectively ceased to function as education institutions. Cellphone and computer networks are down, and some campuses have become temporary refugee centers. Thousands of people from across the region are missing, and a senior police official estimated the death toll to be more than 10,000.
Many of Japan’s universities were on spring break when the disaster struck, leaving most classrooms empty. Some educators said that fact may have spared campuses from heavy casualties.
In Tokyo, the damage is not as widespread, but the city’s universities are still struggling with recovery efforts.
Tokyo’s biggest institutions, including the University of Tokyo and Waseda University, told students and many faculty members to stay home as the government gets set to introduce rolling power cuts. The blackouts are meant to save power as authorities struggle to repair nuclear reactors crippled during the disaster.
At the Tokyo Institute of Technology, part-time instructors were told to leave at noon to save electricity. The University of Tokyo has ordered department chairs to stop any lab experiments that require excessive amounts of electricity.
Some foreign professors are either staying away or even returning to Europe and the United States amid fears of a major nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, about 160 miles northeast of the capital.
American branch campuses in Tokyo operated by Temple University and Lakeland College were closed Monday.
The dean of Temple University’s Japan campus, Bruce Stronach, said he was “almost at breaking point” trying to deal with calls and inquires from worried parents abroad. “We spent the weekend ascertaining the whereabouts of all our students,” he said. “We have checked the safety of our buildings and have been monitoring the events in Fukushima as well. The most important thing is keeping our students and their parents updated through the Web, Twitter, Facebook, and e-mails.”

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