A crisis of national universities in Japan

Message-ID: 
From: Toru Tsujishita
To: a.draxler@unesco.org
Subject: A crisis of national universities in Japan
Date: Sun, 2 Apr 2000 12:33:01 +0200 

Dear Ms. Alexandra Draxler,

I am a mathematician working in Hokkaido University and writing this letter
to ask you to pay attention to the deep difficulty confronting the present
and the future national universities in Japan.

As you might already know very well, the Japanese government is
planning to change the national universities system, ?making them into
so called Indepedent Administrative Agencies, new institution recently
designed to reduce the size of governmental organization. When the plan is
realized, the universities will have more administrative freedom but less
academic and educational freedom, as is seen clearly from the law called
"Common Law of Independent Administrative Agencies."

At first, most people feel puzzled to hear that such a clumsy plan is really
going to be carried out soon. The impetus originated from the pledge of the
present cabinet to reduce the number of government employees to 75% in ten
years. One of the most efficient and easy way to achieve this pledge is to
change national universities systems so that the 130 thounsands staffs cease
to be national employees.

This real politic motivation behind the plan made many people in university
angry with the government.
Partly to conciliate these people, the Liberal Democratic Party made a proposal
which tries to persuade them that the plan is a good one also for
universities and stress the following merits.

(1) The universities will have more independence in administrative
works. For example they can determine the salary of the staffs
according to their contribution.

(2) There will be severe competition among universities, among
faculties and among staffs, which will improve the quality of the
national universities in various ways. In fact, every five years, the
universities will be somehow evaluated so that the officers in the
authorities concerned can decide to reform and/or abolish universities
according to the performance in education and research as well as in
their contribution to industry.

(3) There will emerge various types of universities, e.g. community
colleges, graduate schools, medical schools, etc. which will improve
the efficiency of education and research in universities,
since some staffs will engage solely in research and others in education.

However, it is obvious that the point (2) will strengthen greatly the
control of the ministries concerned, even over the academic  activities.
This will damage the balanced evolution of academic research as well
as the mission of higher education giving the students not only the
expert knowledge but also deep and constant concern for the fates of
people, especially for the weaker ones.

Moreover the point (3) will block the movement of staffs among national
universities since most people do not  like to move to much worse
environment. The introduction of time contracts will not remedy the
situation but will work only as a mechanism to dismiss young researchers
when they are not necessary from the point of view of research bosses.

This possibly disastrous change of the Japanese national university system
would also give bad effects to the direction of world-wide higher education
system, since it is a strong movement against the WORLD DECLARATION ON
HIGHER EDUCATION FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY by UNESCO.

The present cabinet  however has no intention to pay attention to
our anxieties and are ready to realize the plan soon. I would like to
ask you to warn the Japanese government, in the occasion of G8 Education
Ministers' Meeting and Forum, about the misconception on the higher
education behind the plan and to spend more time to check the plan whether
or not it will cripple Japanese universities in many aspects.

With best wishes,
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Professor,  Department of Mathematics,
Hokkaido Universeity
Kita 10 Nishi 8, Sapporo 060-0810 JAPAN
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