An Overview of the Higher Education System in Japan

2005

Higher Education

A number of different parties in Japan have been discussinghigher educational reform for over thirty years. Many of theseideas finally started to take form in the 1990s as the Ministryof Education's University Council began implementing many of thepropositions that had been put forth during the deliberations ofthe 1970s and 1980s. As Japan enters the 21st century, its18-year-old population has decreased by over half a million since1992. It will decrease another 300,000 by the year 2010. This has added an increased urgency to make reforms, especially atthird-tier universities, which are now starting to have troublerecruiting students. Japan's Ministry of Education would alsolike to bring the quality of its university educational standardsup to par with the rest of the advanced nations. Moreover, industryis demanding a new breed of employee – and one much different thanthe Japanese educational system has been known to produce. Finally, a new generation of Japanese is starting ...

2000

2000

Though Japan has established one the largest higher education systems in Asia much earlier than most of the other Asian countries and some European countries, including the UK, Germany and France, except for a very few Japanese books and articles, little research has been published in Japan on this topic. This article will address the research question: how did Japan's higher education shift from massification, through to post-massification and, now, to near universal access? By examining the changes in the enrollment in Japan's higher education based on quantitative analysis, the article will provide an example of how an Asian country had experienced different stages of the growth in enrollments in higher education. Moreover, it is also argued that the major findings from Japan's case study are not necessarily consistent with the definition of the three-stage linear changes in higher education enrollment by Martin Trow.

Higher Education, 2002

Japanese universities have beentightly controlled by the Ministry of Educationand it has often been pointed out that theirautonomy has been ambiguous. In the late 1990s,however, the Japanese government started thedebate about introducing an IndependentAdministrative Institution system in order toderegulate its authority and to make therelationship between the government andnational universities clear. If this systemwere actually introduced, universities in Japanwould not only enjoy a great amount ofautonomy, but would also face financialproblems. The reality is unclear so far, butsome national universities have already startedto reform themselves radically in preparationfor the introduction.

1998

An important theme underlying the reform agenda is an avowed orientation to expansion and diversification, driven by the demands of a growing, upwardly mobile (or at least upwardly aspiring) population and to the needs of an increasingly competitive, technologically-sophisticated economy.

2000