Japanese universities will adopt a new autumn school year schedule to attract more international students, chinanews.com reported on Wednesday.

Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), announced that it will officially launch the autumn school schedule for universities in Japan, as in most other countries.

Japan's traditional school year begins in April. The move is targeted at reaching more international students to achieve its aim of having 300,000 overseas students by 2020, the report said.