著者

矢野 真和

出版者

東洋館

雑誌

教育社会学研究 (ISSN:03873145)

巻号頁・発行日

no.45, pp.p20-34, 1989-10

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The aim of the present paper is to specify the tasks with which higher education policy has to deal at the present time, after pointing out the characteristics of higher education policy taken in Japan during the period of educational expansion in the 1960s and the early 1970s. The first question I seek to explore is the framework underlying the educational policy. There are three concepts to be brought out with respect to the framework. They are a) the contrast between 'Individual Demand Model' and 'Social Needs Model', and as criteria for policy-making, b) the collision between three aspects of efficiency, equality and educational goal, and c) distinction between economic factor and non-economic factor. I endeavour to illustrate the framework constructed with these three inter-crossing concepts. Within this reexamined framework, higher education policy during the period of rapid growth has the following characteristics: 1) Japan decided on the 'Individual Demand Model', and at the same time gave priority to efficiency from both economic and non-economic aspects. 2) It has rather successfully solved dilemmas with social needs and with the criterion of equality which were neglected, owing to the steady expansion in demand for higher educational opportunity and to the dual structure or differentiation between the public sector and the private sector. What I propose in the second place is that the following questions deserve serious discussion in helping to understand problems that the past policy decisions have created and policy tasks under the present situation: a) educational demand and supply, b) differentiation of higher education system, c) equality of opportunities, and d) labor supply and labor demand. As a result of the discussion about the problems and policy tasks from the four above-mentioned viewpoints, I have concluded that the quantitative balance between educational demand and supply still remain the greatest concern in higher education policy within a framework which has not substantially changed since the period of rapid growth. The central issue of higher education today should be how to adjust provision to varieties of demands in quality, and therefore Japanese higher education will not able to enter upon a new phase until the task to respond to diversified needs receive mature consideration in poliby-making.