International Higher Education # 33

Martin Finkelstein
Martin Finkelstein is professor of Education at Seton Hall University and was visiting professor, in 2002-2003, at the Research Institute for Higher Education, Hiroshima University, Japan. Address: Department of Education Leadership, Management and Policy, 418 Kozlowski Hall, Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ 07079. E-mail: <finkelma@shu.edu>.

The foundation of Japan's national universities is about to be shaken--perhaps a lot, perhaps only a little, depending on whom you ask--by a "new" reform initiative of a scope perhaps not seen since the Allied occupation post–World War II. Betting that the “key” to the future economic resurgence of Japan lies in the creation of a world-class infrastructure for research and development at its national universities, the Ministry of Education has undertaken two major concurrent initiatives designed to introduce competitive, market mechanisms into the system: (1) the authorization for the national universities to incorporate as public corporations with a Board of Trustees, independent (at least theoretically) of the ministry; and (2) the authorization and incentive for academic units across the public system to move away from the tenure system toward fixed-term contracts as the basis for faculty appointments. Both these reforms are widely viewed (although not explicitly advertised as such) as a new phase in the "Americanization" of the Japanese system.

During the 2003-2003 academic year, I spent seven months as a visiting professor at Hiroshima University, one of the "major" national universities and witnessed the transition firsthand.

The Before
For those less familiar with the Japanese system, we begin with the basic observation that it is much more continental European (specifically Germanic) in organization (without the Länder) than American. It is a quintessentially bureaucratic system, animated by rules for autonomous operation of self-contained academic units. The Ministry of Education interacts directly with individual academic units on the various campuses of the national universities--variously known as faculties (focused on undergraduate education), graduate schools, and research institutes and centers. These units are relatively independent of the university campus administration, a minimalist infrastructure that resembles university administration in the United States at the turn of the 20th century--albeit minus the all-powerful president (in Japan, the national university president resembles the titular head of a "loose" confederation of warlords who owe their only true allegiance to the king--the ministry bureaucracy. They operate quasi-autonomously, but within the web of "royal" rules and regulations established by the ministry and enforced by unit administrators who serve as the “in-residence” eyes and ears of the ministry.

Over the past decade, the Japanese national universities have been refocusing their energies on becoming world–class centers of research, science, and technology. So, organizationally speaking, the major development over the past decade has been the growth in the sheer number (and small size) of such autonomous academic units at the national universities, particularly research units (variously labeled institutes or centers, of which any specialized academic field may boast at least several) and graduate schools. Unlike most other nations, the public sector in Japan has not been asked to assume major responsibility for expanding access to the younger generation. Indeed, in Japan, it is the large and explosively growing private sector that has over the past generation expanded to absorb the masses--now 500 institutions compared to the 99 national universities. And when enrollment plunges over the next decade, it will be the private sector that will be most vulnerable; and the national universities will be able to pursue the national goal of research excellence relatively undisturbed by market forces.

At least in the public sector, then, the Japanese academic profession has had the best of all worlds--a marked insularity from market forces and an extraordinary continuity in financial support. Tenure has been a basic condition of employment (appointment); and there has been remarkably little pressure on the public sector. In part, this is the way of all social institutions in Japan--taking on a life of their own and being relatively impervious to changing external circumstances--as much as any defining characteristic of the university sector, per se. Moreover, and this is a defining characteristic of the Japanese enigma, this relative insularity coexists with an historically well-developed and lavishly (government) supported program of bringing foreign scholars to Japan and sending Japanese scholars abroad.

The After, or the In-Between
To what extent will Japanese higher education be reshaped in the image of American higher education? How "independent" of the ministry will these new corporate entities be? Who will the trustees be and how will they be selected? Will a new breed of president emerge at the public campuses, reminiscent of the William Rainey Harpers and Nicholas Murray Butlers of the American university, or the corporate CEOs of today's U.S. research universities? Will corporatization give rise to a vast administrative infrastructure in the Japanese universities, heretofore barely discernible that will compete with the traditional faculties for influence in academic decision making? Will the introduction of performance funding, a nontenure system, and other market mechanisms increase faculty mobility and research productivity? Or, will it lead to the "casualization" of academic labor as we have seen in the United States and Australia and the increasing specialization of the faculty role along functional lines (teachers only, researchers only, program administrators only)? Will academic life become radically different for the new generation of Japanese academics who will be called upon to lead the Japanese system to world-class status? To what extent will the tenure (or nontenure) revolution be consummated, or successfully resisted by the faculties? And, even if successfully implemented, will a fixed contract system lead to any more mobility and productivity than a tenure system? This is a dubious outcome if we take the results of the Harvard Project on Faculty Appointments seriously (see, for example, Richard Chait's book, The Questions of Tenure). More generally, will these American forms actually transform Japanese academic culture or merely superimpose themselves as an external shell on a functionally autonomous system? Can competition be infused into an inherently noncompetitive and bureaucratic culture?

These are very uncertain times for Japanese academics. The older generation approaches the implementation of these reforms with considerable trepidation--probably the first such period in a half century. And the younger generation remains silent, working harder than ever and wondering about paradise lost.