Higher Education Governance from a Macro-Perspective

Recent Trends in Europe and the United States, and Their Influence on Japan

Abstract

　 Recent trends in higher education governance, which have been underpinned by interaction with various stakeholders in society, can be divided into the following three categories: (1) changes in the role of government associated with NPM-type administrative reforms, (2) rapid responsiveness to demands from the market and the political sector, and (3) institutional diversification as seen from horizontal (eg. missions in society) and vertical (eg. ranking of research competitiveness) perspectives. The first trend has been led by the strong intention to adopt in the higher education sector the same kind of measures as those aimed at improving the level of efficiency in the provision of public services. The other two trends derive from the strong demands made by the business and political sectors for a more persuasive and more clearly visible “utilitarian” performance on the part of higher education.

　 In Japan, moreover, the Ministry of Finance has signaled its intention of allocating public money more efficiently and effectively on the basis of a set of clear criteria in order to pursue fiscal reform while laboring under the heaviest burden of public debt found among industrialized countries. This direction obviously corresponds to the recent trends mentioned above, and now strong pressure to undertake governance reform is imposed on Japanese public-sector higher education represented by national universities. That means they have become subject to pressure from political, business and fiscal decision makers instead of being free to decide their own future in response to market forces.