Here's a follow up that Bern Mulvey and I did right after Koizumi took power (has it been almost a year?). This was later worked into a piece for Times Higher Education Supplement and is archived there but accessible only if you pay. The THES piece reads better, but this one covers more material.
Japan's current climate for reform: How will it impact teaching at national universities? Bern Mulvey and Charles Jannuzi write from Fukui University, Japan Last year we reported that national universities in Japan would soon be granted their "independence"-- released from their exclusive ties with the national government and its Ministry of Education. Once realized, the benefits of this drive to force national universities into self-autonomy are supposed to include the following: (1) Saving the debt-ridden government money. This will most obviously be done by eliminating and combining programs, college-/school-level divisions, and even entire universities. (2) Launching the universities into local self-governance with strict fiscal accountability to the centre. Once independent, these institutions may well have to compete for funding among themselves or with other public and private universities. In fact, private universities support the reform of national universities because they hope such changes to the system will free up more public subsidy to go their way. However, given the current fiscal problems facing the national and local governments, it seems that in the long term, the situation will be many more universities competing for a declining pool of national money. Clearly, universities that hope to survive, regardless of their original foundation (national, public or private), will have to find alternative sources of funding and endowment. (3) Enlivening teaching through effective evaluation of teachers' performance and curriculum development. Many Japanese educators contend that Japanese universities do not foster creativity or flexible approaches to problem-solving in their students, and teacher-centred lectures are often cited as one of the main reasons. (4) Through competitive tenure, making the institutions more internationally competitive in scientific and technological research. As already stated, one goal is to take the many small universities and combine them into larger, more cost-efficient operations. It is also hoped that this will result in synergies in basic and applied research that will create at least a handful of world-class universities among the few that will remain. Another reform that is already having an effect is the change in the civil servant status of national university professors, scientists and medical doctors which allows them to form research and business tie-ups with the private sector. In order to sever the bonds between the national government and its 98 universities, it has been first necessary for reform proponents and their supporters to change the fundamental laws and regulations governing education--a process that is not yet finished. However, so far, the actual realization of educational reform policies has been slowed up by prolonged instability in Japan's prime minister post. Now, under the current government, it seems quite likely that the national universities will see serious implementation of reforms down to a workaday level. The present conservative nationalist prime minister, Koizumi Junichiro, is a wildly popular political opportunist who, in order to stay in office and keep the LDP in power, will support nearly any policy that has been given the descriptor "reform". Moreover, he can hardly be considered a fan of national universities, since he is a graduate of Keio University, one of Japan's most elite private institutions. It is also significant that the woman he has chosen for the post of Education Minister, Toyama Atsuko, is a career bureaucrat and NOT a politician from one of the ruling party's factions. One previously stated goal that had been unexplained has become somewhat clearer: among reformers of educational and the national bureaucracy, there were those who wanted to impose strict fiscal regimens on the universities while at the same time granting and developing local autonomy over all other matters. In order to do this, the mechanism that had been proposed was some sort of regional board of overseers to act as an intermediary across the interests of the government, the former national universities, and the regional communities which they are supposed to serve. It was, however, unclear as to who would constitute and run these boards. At the same time, it was also unexplained just how, once constituted, these boards could fiscally control former national universities and while benevolently overseeing local autonomy in matters such as program management or the conduct of teaching and research. One proposal has been to bring modern business models to the management of the universities. But can universities and their programs be effectively managed and evaluated along business principles? Whose principles, expertise and interests are most applicable in such a process? Government bureaucrats? Educators with civil servant status? Or individuals and groups from outside either academia or the civil service, such as business people from for-profit companies? Or perhaps management from the non-profit third-sector NGOs? Throughout Japan, national university administrators, faculty and staff are grappling with such issues as they prepare for the latest wave of reforms from the Japanese government--this as both new proposals are made and as reforms already law are made a fait accompli. Regardless of the possible conflicts of interest which loom, the reforms for the independence of national universities are starting to fall in place in very concrete terms. It has been decreed that each university will be administered by an appointed head manager--a political appointment that will itself be made at cabinet level. Furthermore, these regional boards of overseers will be established, in effect, as advisory groups to the government and be given the somewhat Orwellian title of "hyouka i-in kai" or "standards committees". These committees will have the responsibility of evaluating both the performance of university managers and the faculty these managers oversee. It is these latest specific developments which have to be most troubling for the teachers at the national universities. The new head managers, who are supposed to come from science and/or business backgrounds, will be charged with ensuring a "results-orientated efficiency" at the schools under their management. "Results-oriented efficiency" seems to be a rather ominous term, hinting that the government really has not resolved the paradox of wanting tight fiscal control while at the same time launching and fostering something other than contrived local autonomy. It also seems almost a matter of course that perceived non-conformance to prescribed "results-oriented efficiency" could be used to justify cutting funds to universities, the cancellation of programs and fields of study, and personnel cuts correlated with the previous two. Both the head managers and the standards committees who "advise" them will be expected to ensure improvements in "productivity" from the faculty. In that connection, work performance will be periodically evaluated based on the results of students' evaluations, the quantity and prestige of papers presented and published, and a third, vaguely defined category loosely translating as "community service requirements". This may well leave teachers in certain fields at the national universities harried and on ever shakier ground in trying to finish out a career. For example, one reason why there are a large number of jobs teaching EFL at universities is that so much English is a required subject, both in programs where it might be expected (such as teacher training courses), and in general education curricula. In any evaluation scheme based on students' perceptions, teachers may be put in a difficult position, to say the least, since students taking courses only because they are required can prove to be difficult consumers. Unsatisfied with the university, its programs and its general education curriculum, students can very easily take out their frustrations on a hapless teacher who may actually have very little control over most matters. University head managers and standards committee members with little or no expertise in or understanding of foreign language teaching could use student evaluations of programs, courses and individual teachers to undercut further the already low status of the thousands of foreign nationals teaching English and other foreign languages.
