Divs-poole

REFORM OF JAPANESE HIGHER EDUCATION 

founded at the beginning of the 19th century are now being confronted with an era 

of deep-rooted reform and change” (Amano 1999, p. ii). Yonezawa (2000) explains 

the institutional response and governance impact of the process of these “limited 

privatization” reforms of the national university system: 1) initial objection to, but 

final acceptance of the process, 2) mergers of two or more public universities, 3) a 

new Quality Assessment system (à la QAA in England and Wales), and 4) a new 

budgetary system with a lump-sum allocation of government funding. 

All universities in Japan, however, are not merely standing by passively. Certain 

four-year institutions appear to be challenging themselves to keep abreast of the 

changing times. There are plenty of examples of university experimentation in 

Japan. As with most reforms, changes start not with the traditional established part 

of a system but rather at the periphery. The case of higher education in Japan is no 

exception. Specifically, within an environment of both intensified competition 

from a relaxation of regulations and a steady long-term decrease in the population 

of 18-year-olds, newly established universities looking to add a fresh approach to 

“the system” cannot survive and prosper without challenging the established 

universities and offering a noticeable difference.  

The university reforms now underway have as their impetus the revision of the 

standards for university facilities as put forth in the 1991 report of the Daigaku 

Shingikai (often translated as the “Ad Hoc University Council”). However Amano 

claims that “the revision most aspired toward in this report was no less than an 

innovation of education itself (Amano 1999, p. iii). He believes that, especially, the 

liberalization of the content of the education curriculum has achieved a 

considerable change in the makeup of the four-year university education. The 

removal of the division between the “general” education (kyōyō) and “specialized” 

(senmon) education courses has resulted in the disappearance of liberal arts and 

“general” education curricula at many universities.  

The question remains, however, to what degree such reforms have succeeded, or 

will succeed, in changing the quality of a university education. Although he admits 

that to assess the results at this stage may be premature, Amano questions whether 

by international standards the quality of education that students are receiving has 

actually improved. The relaxation in entrance examination competition due to the 

decline in the population of 18-year-olds,  the diversification in the selection 

process of applicants, and a curriculum reform that has lowered the standards of 

elementary and junior high school have all raised new issues about the content of 

university education at universities. Furthermore, Amano feels that a university 

attendance rate of 50 percent (approaching the level of Trow’s “universal” 

attendance

1

 combined with the development of the information age means that new 

issues, such as the admission of adult learners and more involvement in the global 

community, are forcing universities to confront very new and challenging issues. 

The issues discussed in this section are only a very few of such reform problems 

that challenge universities.  

Amano warns that from the standpoint of both university practitioners and 

education researchers, these problems are more than ever before issues of such a 

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CHAPTER 2 

new character that the heretofore accumulated experience, information, and 

research are inadequate. In his book, Amano explains that with the recent 

establishment of an official organization, researchers into higher education have 

only just taken the first step to legitimize their findings. He doubts that among 

researchers such as himself there is enough competence to theoretically, practically, 

and accurately answer the new challenges. It is not only the universities that are 

faced with a conundrum. Academics working on research into higher education are 

finding that they have few answers. 

Amano’s discussion of reform, as with many such discussions, is for the most 

part a consideration of top-down approach, whether at the government or 

institutional level. One important discourse that seems missing, to me anyway, is 

examples of changes from the bottom up, “reconstructions” of university culture 

that may result in reforming practice rather than simply reforming structure. Frost 

and Teodorescu (2001, pp. 409–410) illuminate such an example of reform of 

practice, an apparent change of teaching and university “culture” at a major 

research university. Though initially a top-down initiative, the result was “cultural 

change,” as they put it. “The discourse moved from initial macrolevel discussions 

to a university-wide movement on a more micro scale, fostering a culture that not 

only values research and teaching equivalently but that also values teaching and 

learning equivalently” (Frost & Teodorescu 2001, p. 410). Though couched in the 

management language of organizational theory rather than anthropology, Frost and 

Teodorescu’s point is one that I attempt to explore ethnographically below, looking 

at individual beliefs of teaching and “the institutional culture” of EUC.  

The view of HE reform of many western observers (and western-looking 

Japanese educators) is more critical, and less optimistic, than Amano’s. Most feel 

as Doyon (2001), that the paradox of Japanese HE is the commonly held view that 

students are subjected to an examination hell to enter university, but then the actual 

university experience of “higher learning” is no more than a four-year leisure land. 

Of the many popular explanations for this paradox, the two most recurrent 

“excuses” are that university life is a reward for high school hell and that 

university life is a break before the hell of working. There are more complex 

explanations, however. 

Brian McVeigh (2001, 2002b) offers an interpretation in which he argues that 

HE in Japan is a “myth.” In a Parsonian sense, he (McVeigh 2002b) argues 

forcefully that Japan’s exam-centered schooling socializes students to think that 

studying means examination prep, classroom participation means teacher 

inspection, test taking is a sort of multiple-choice “catechism,” academic study is 

merely credentialism, and learning is nothing more than rote memorization. The 

education and examination system in Japan encourages in students an apathy 

toward learning and an overconformity that manifests itself in shyness in the 

classroom. It is interesting to compare McVeigh’s description of Japanese HE with 

very similar points that Nathan (2005) makes after her ethnographic study of 

American university students, crossculturally weighing what may indeed be global 

traits of HEIs and their students. 

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