Linking graduate and undergraduate education in the knowledge society: exploring key quality issues from a Japanese perspective

Abstract

Introduction In recent work I have reviewed changes in graduate schools over the past 30 years, identifying the increasing scale of graduate education (Arimoto 2008a). Within the emergent knowledge-based society the importance of graduate education has increased with the result that the relationship between graduate education and undergraduate education needs to be reconsidered seriously to enhance their coordination. Related to the above review, it is interesting to note that there have been no articles that have dealt directly with the necessity of promoting integration between graduate and undergraduate education. In this context, this chapter intends to deal with this matter originally and intensively by focusing on some of the “logics” that underlie these structures and suggest the demand for such an integration. The need to link graduate and undergraduate education may seem obvious in a knowledge-based society, but in practice it is a complex issue given that undergraduate and graduate education-certainly in Japan-are not necessarily linked and integrated. Rather they are structurally separated as a division of labor in the developing processes of higher education (HE) systems so that linkage, let alone integration, is likely to be fairly difficult to realize. Wilhelm von Humboldt proclaimed that teaching and research should be integrated in academia, but in reality a trend of separation and conflict between them deepened gradually during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, reconsideration of this linkage and integration between research and teaching has become a necessity in the twenty-first century as the “weight of research” in higher education has increased and with it the necessity of teaching “superdiversified students” who are the products of the increasing universalization of HE. By “teaching through research” in both tiers, liberal and professional education can and should be linked and integrated. Based on these considerations, this chapter explores key issues underlying the main theme of linking graduate and undergraduate education in knowledge societies by focusing on an analysis of several of the critical factors involved in theseprocesses. Specifically, it seeks to examine the logics of ten aspects related to the necessity of linkage between undergraduate and graduate education: (1) the knowledge society; (2) the concept and practice of academic discipline; (3) universalization; (4) globalization; (5) growth and development; (6) education; (7) institutionalization of the school system; (8) research and teaching orientations; (9) centers of learning; (10) scholarship.