Incorporation of National Universities in Japan

Abstract

As of April of 2004, Japanese national universities became National University Corporations (NUCs). While the reform was implemented in a wave of initiatives for restructuring government activities, it reflected to an extent the current global trend towards marketization of higher education. This reform, however, is by no means complete. As the implementation of reform progresses, new problems and issues have kept emerging. What had seemed to be a trivial detail turned out to be critical in determining the nature of the NUCs. Examination of this reform will not only help understand the current reforms in Japan, but also illuminate some of the fundamental issues that the higher education systems in the world are facing. In this paper, I shall outline the historical and political backdrops of the current reform, outline the basic construct of the NUC and examine the process of implementation and the issues revealed in the process.