Radio Japan, October 28, 1999

Key Words in the News

Giving National Universities the Status of Independent Administrative
Institutions

Plans have been announced to turn national universities into
independent administrative institutions as part of the government's
administrative reform efforts, and have been coming under
attention. In today's Key Words in the News, we have NHK commentator
Nobuo Hayakawa to explain this issue.

Setting up independent administrative institutions refers to
separating the non-clerical blue-collar operations and service
departments from the government's administrative organizations and
making them into separate corporate entities. Through this change into
corporate entities that have a sense of running a business, the
government aims to encourage more efficient operations and slimmer
organizational structures. The central government's ministries and
agencies are scheduled to be re-organized in January of 2001, and as
part of this re-organization, 89 institutions including state-run
museums and art museums are scheduled to become independent
administrative institutions.

At present, national universities are not included in this number. In
the debate over whether to include national universities in these
moves to change their status, at first, the Ministry of Education had
taken an opposing stance, saying "education and research do not go
with the perspective of going after efficiency." At a cabinet meeting
in April, the government has also postponed its decision, saying "the
matter will be considered as part of university reform, to reach a
conclusion by the year 2003."

However the Ministry of Education showed a completely different
attitude at an extraordinary meeting of national university presidents
held on September 20th. The Ministry revealed that it is willing to
accept the idea of turning national universities into independent
administrative institutions.

One reason for this change is the fact that in 2001, the government
will begin to implement a ten-year-plan to decrease the number of
public servants by twenty-five percent. National universities employ
approximately 125-thousand faculty and staff, and if they remain
national universities, they will have to undergo large cuts. However,
if they  become independent administrative institutions, they will not
be included in these cuts. So it is believed the Education Ministry
decided that it is not advantageous to continue opposition against
becoming independent administrative institutions.

In that case, based upon plans announced by the Ministry of Education,
what kind of changes will universities undergo?

First, university presidents will be chosen through a different
procedure. After the central government's re-organization, the
Minister of Education's responsibilities will be assumed by the new
Minister of Education and Science, who will continue to appoint
university presidents based upon the recommendations of universities
themselves. However, the government is asking universities to
discontinue the school president elections that they are currently
holding, and says it will "consider ways for the actual selection
process to take place at council meetings made up of the heads of
university departments and other senior members of the university."

Secondly, universities will be asked to form five-year mid-range goals
regarding how they will run their operations. The state minister will
ask for the prior options of each university to decide these
five-year-goals.

Thirdly, in order to evaluate whether these goals are being achieved,
the Ministry of Education and Science, just like other ministries and
agencies, will set up evaluation committees made up of outside
experts. But, in addition, it will set up its own organization made up
of education experts to evaluate universities and to make decisions
such as the awarding of academic degrees, and will respect the results
of this orgainization's evaluations.

So as you can see, the Ministry of Education, expecting opposition
from universities, has given its proposals the characteristic of
respecting the independence of universities compared to other
institutions that will also be turned into corporate entities.

Among the universities, there seems to be deeply-rooted resistance
against the proposal put forward by the Ministry of Education, out of
fear that there will be adverse effects upon long-term research
activities. There is also spreading anxiety that there will be
differences from university to university regarding the scale of
assets that will be handed down, which may lead to some universities
falling into difficulties and being forced to close down. On the other
hand, within the government there are opinions that say the Ministry
of Education's proposal has too many exceptions, so it won't lead to
the invigoration of universities.

The Ministry of Education plans to submit a final proposal early next
fiscal year to the government's headquarters for promoting reform of
central ministries and agencies. But even though there is heated
debate among those involved, the issue doesn't seem to be coming under
much debate among the general public. Some people have pointed out
that this is because there hasn't been any fundamental debate over how
national universities are to be changed. In addition, it is difficult
to tell exactly what the changes are going to be like, for example how
the changes will affect tuition fees, or what sort of places
universities will become for students. I would like to ask those
involved for debates that look at university reform as a whole, and to
try not to make this a tempest in a tea cup.

Key Words in the News. Today we had NHK commentator Nobuo Hayakawa to
explain the issue of turning state-run universities into independent
administrative institutions.