国立大学における研究費補助のパターン変化

「特定目的化」と「競争化」

抄録

　 The Japanese national university research funding system consists of various forms of research funding, which make it difficult to comprehend the complete image of and changes to the system. This paper examines the changing patterns of research funding at national universities in postwar Japan.

　 Policies for academic research in institutes of higher education need to support the autonomous development of scientific logic, but they also have to improve the efficiency of resource allocation. Efficiency improvement in academic finance may well be said to have been achieved by specifying the purpose of research or by making resource allocation competitive. From this bi-dimensional perspective (i.e., based on research specificity or allocation competitiveness), we can assume four basic types of research funding : non-specific/non-competitive type, specific/non-competitive type, non-specific/competitive type and specific/ competitive type.

　 Based on this framework, we categorize research funding for national universities as follows : Flat-Rate Faculty-Provision, Grants-in-Aid, Budgets of Research Institutes, Grants and Endowments, Special Budgets for teaching and research, and Commissions Research. We also examine the changing patterns of research funding within the political and social context of postwar Japan.

　 From this analysis it is argued that, while there are two directions of change within the funding system, purpose-specific and competitive allocation, the relations vary substantially under the changing structure of higher education as a whole. It is also argued that from this perspective, academic research policies in Japan have come to a significant juncture in recent years.