- 著者
-
坂野 慎二
- 出版者
- 日本教育行政学会
- 雑誌
- 日本教育行政学会年報 (ISSN:09198393)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.39, pp.19-36, 2013-10-11 (Released:2018-01-09)
This paper analyzes the changes in the plans, policies, and budgets of higher education. The main knowledge is the following: 1. Higher education policies were often discussed after the proposals of the Council of Extraordinary Education in the mid-1980s. In those days, the population of high school graduates was increasing, but by the 1990s the population of graduates was decreasing. The Ministry of Education had made several plans to restrict the number of new university students and restrict the founding of universities in the big cities, but from the late 1990s the cabinet began to abolish many of these restrictions and to enable easier founding of new universities. In 2002 the Ministry of Education gave up its plan of higher education capacities. A 2005 Council of Education recommendation was that universities should be distinguished by their functions, focusing on research, professional education, liberal education, lifelong learning, and/or contributions to their regions. 2. On the contrary, the Ministry of Education requires some guarantees for the qualities of higher education. Recommendations in 2005 and 2008 by the Council of Education suggest that the universities clarify their admission, curriculum, and graduation policies. This meant that the universities were authorized to decide subjects, curricula, and so on by themselves, but it also meant that there would be stricter competition among universities. The main control retained by the government is to evaluate the universities every six years. 3. For fair competition, the universities need rules. The government decided to change the management system of the state universities. The state universities were allocated public resources but the usage was very restricted. From 2004 the state universities were reconstructed as granted universities and were permitted to decide the usage of public resources. But the amounts of the grants were reduced every year from 2006 to 2010. The management system of the state universities was thereby changed and now each university president has more authority. 4. The Ministry of Education is trying to change the roles of faculties and graduate schools. Graduate schools should be quantitatively expanded and graduates should get positions not only as researchers but also professional positions in private companies. The government believes that the expansion of post-graduate education is necessary to compete in worldwide research. In fact, the number of graduates has been increasing from ca. 90,000 in 1990 to ca. 270,000 in 2010. But many graduates can't find adequate positions. 5. The government has tried to reduce its expenditures these past 15 years. The budget for compulsory education policies has been decreasing year by year. The budget for state universities grants has been decreasing, too, while the subsidies to private universities was increasing a little in the first half of the 2000s. The data show that after the change of administration in 2009 the government provided fewer grants and subsidies for the running costs of universities, but provides more competitive subsidies to the universities that are improving the quality of research and education.