Universities in Hinterland and Their Future

Globalization and Higher Education in Japan

Abstract

When the movements of studets and ideas beyond the nation state have been talked about as “internationalization” of education, it was implicitly linked to the hope of uniting different nations. With “globalization” of education, not only has its scope been extended to social and economic aspects, but also to the negative side of the unavoidable trend. In fact, many people consider globalization of education as a grave challenge, or even intrigues that creates new inequity among and within nation states. Such a radical shift of perspective is most pronounced in higher education. In this paper I first tried to clarify the context in which “globalization” of higher education is talked about from the perspective of social and economic relation between the University and the mondern nation state (Section I). Then, more concrete issues are analyzed with respect to education (Section 2) and research (Section 3) functions of the Univesity. It is argued that globalization, together with the development of Information Technology, is creating huge markets of both learning opportunities and scientific knowledge beyond the boundary of state. Even though all the nations are involved in this trend, the impacts are significantly different by nation. For Japanese higher education the difficulty appears to lie less in being involved in the trend than eploiting the opportunities offered by the trend. in this particular sense, Japan's position is increasingly entrenched in a hinterland. Departure from such position will require a considerable restructuring in organization and the value in the academics.