著者

喜多村 和之

出版者

Japan Society for Research Policy and Innovation Management

雑誌

研究 技術 計画 (ISSN:09147020)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.15, no.1, pp.7-12, 2000-10-25 (Released:2017-12-29)

参考文献数

27

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In October 1999, the Minister of Education proposed the drastic change of legal status of all 99 national universities from the current "governmental institutional establishments" to a new "independent administrative corporation" with legal person status(dokuritsu gyosei houjin)according to the overall administrative reform plan of the central government. Association of the National Universities has principally opposed against this plan. Although this change has been initiated by the political forces, however, the idea that the National university should have more autonomous status which is independent from the direct governmental control have been repeatedly proposed. This is the old and new problem which had proposed by faculty members of the Imperial University and mass media even since 1889, in the Meiji era, just after the founding of the University. After the WWII, in 1970s, Central Council of Education(Chukyoshin)proposed the idea of the same autonomous legal corporation, and OECD Examiners which reviewed Japanese educational policies in 1971, supported the idea, and Ad.Hoc.Commission for Educational Reform(rinkyoshin)in 1980s also proposed the similar corporation status. However, all these governmental plans have not been implemented due to strong oppositions from national universities, while national universities each time have not been successful in proposing strong, alternative idea, based on the consensus of the academic circles. Although it is not yet certain if this conflicts between governments and universities may result, the Minister of Education decided to the reform and Liberal Democratic Party principally supported the idea in June 2000, the resolution of this old but new important questions "what kind of legal status and institutional form should be most desirable?" requires the resolution of the most basic and fundamental question "what is the concept of the unibersity in the modern society, and what kind of missions should be conducted by the university? Unifortunately, it seems that both Japanese national universities and government have not yet built the raison d'etre of the existence of national university which is both understandable and accountable to the Japanese nation as a whole for the 21st century.