2017 Volume 13 Pages 32-47
The cooperative system between industries and universities was introduced to Japan from the United States as an advanced educational approach for amending problems in Japanese postwar economic recovery and educational reform. Although this peculiar educational system never became common, business organizations utilized this idea to address shortages of engineers or to stimulate technological innovation. Industrial implementation coincided with the interests of university management and with governmental policies. On the other hand, such an industry-university-government collaborative promotion was regarded as a revival of prewar national “monopolistic capitalism” and also as a crisis in academic freedom or subjectivity. These criticisms exacerbated ideological disputes through campus activism in the late 1960s, and they created an atmosphere in which such matters of industry-university cooperation were viewed as taboo. Those who opposed industry-university cooperation were seen as ideologically motivated and those who favored it were seen as opportunistic and arbitrary, especially in their convenient use of the idea as slogans. In addition, both arguments were buttressed by abstractly generalizing the interests of industries. And the STS scholars reinforced the generalization of collaborative relationships from historical points of view. Thus, any specifically tailored analyses were disturbed, and the conflict remains.
