大学評価政策の展開と大学の自治

抄録

The purpose of this study is to trace the process of “the university evaluation” changing from the self-improvement oriented to the guided or forced reform oriented in these 40 years. The study shows that university evaluation for self-improvement remains only in name and that the evaluation is used for standardizing universities without considering university autonomy. In order to prove this, the author divided these years into three periods as follows: ⒜ the 1970s and 1980s, in which “the convoy system” for colleges and universities was in place. However some people in the university bodies and in government realized that the system could not continue just before the rapid decrease in the population of 18 year olds. ⒝ the 1990s, in which the university evaluation system was set up by the ministerial ordinance of the Ministry of Education. Not colleges and universities themselves but the Ministry of Education took the lead in establishing this system. ⒞ the 2000s and later, in which the Prime Minister led the deregulation and used university evaluation as a basis for allocating financial resources.

In the first period ⒜, some university bodies tried to develop a self improvement-oriented evaluation system. Although they seemed to find it very difficult for university evaluation to seek improvement and accountability at the same time, “Rinji kyoiku shingikai”, an advisory panel to the Prime Minister established in 1984, did not take this issue seriously. Its Final report simply listed both improvement and accountability as functions of university evaluation. this appeared to be a factor in the failure of university evaluation in Japan. University evaluation has not worked well either for improving universities or for providing useful information to the public since then.

In the second period ⒝, the age of rapid decrease in the population of 18 year olds caused almost all the universities had to face a struggle in enrolling students. the Ministry of Education deregulated the university establishment and reorganization in order to cope with the situation. Universities were obliged by the ordinance, university establishment standard, to work on self-education at the same time. Evaluation for selfimprovement ought to be voluntary, but universities were reluctantly engaged in the self-education in order to obtain authorization for the reorganization, a kind of self-improvement, from the Ministry of Education.

In the final period ⒞, the “Amendment of School Education” law set up a third party evaluation system for universities, “Ninsho-hyoka”. In addition, national universities were incorporated and the evaluation system for national university incorporation was introduced. The original plans of these evaluation systems were based on the mission and objectives of universities, that is the evaluation to respect the individuality of each university. But those plans were changed 6 or 7 years after being introduced. Some measures were carried out to standardize the mission and objectives of each university. Moreover, the government has often used this evaluation for financial resource allocation in recent years. The indices used in the evaluation force universities to improve or reform universities in the same direction.