Research on Financing and Management in Higher Education Institutions in Japan

Abstract

　 It is possible to distinguish two different ways of distibuting government resources to higher education : one could be termed “institutional funding”, in which government allocates budgets to higher educational institutions and those institutions then expend the budgets by carrying out education and research; another way is “individual funding”, in which individual researchers or particular project teams are given financial resources by government to conduct their research. Funding for higher education in Japan has recently shifted from the institutional to the individual approach. In the light of this shift in financing higher education, this paper describes recent trends and future research topics in the areas of funding, financial management, administration and control of higher education institutions. These areas of study are particularly important for both national and private universities in terms of sustaining a high quality of education and research at a time of financial stringency on the part of government and a fall in the eighteen-year old college-going population.