著者

喜多村 和之

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.26, pp.28-39, 2000-10-13 (Released:2018-01-09)

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In October 1999, the Minister of Education proposed a drastic change of the legal status of all 99 national universities from the current "governmental institutional establishments" to a new "independent administrative legal person" (Dokuritsu gyosei houjin) status, in other words, "corporatization" according to the overall administrative reform plan of the central government structure. The Association of National Universities has principally opposed this plan. Although this change has been initiated by political forces intent on improving administrative efficiency and financial savings, the proposal that national universities should have more autonomous status independent of direct governmental control has been, however, historically repeated. This is the old and new problem that was proposed by faculty members at the Imperial University and by the mass media even in the Meiji era, just after the founding of the University in 1889. In the 1970s, the Central Council of Education (Chukyoshin) proposed the idea of the same autonomous legal corporatization. OECD Examiners, who reviewed Japanese educational policies in 1971, supported the idea and the Ad. Hoc. Commission for Educational Reform (Rinkyoshin) in 1980s also proposed the legal person status (Tokushu Houjinka). However, all these governmental plans have not been implemented due to strong opposition from national universities, while national universities have not always been successful each time in competing by proposing strong, alternative ideas based on consensus among academic circles. Although it is not yet certain what the result of this conflict between governmerit and universities may be, in June 2000 the Minister of Education decided to implement the shift and the Liberal Democratic Party also supported the idea. This old but new important question, "what kind of legal status and institutional form should there be" requires the answering of the most basic and fundamental question "What is the concept of the university in modern society, and what is the missions of the university?" Unfortunately it seems that both Japanese national universities and the Japanese government have not yet built a raison d'etre for the national universities that is understandable and accountable to the whole Japanese nation.