2009 Volume 76 Issue 2 Pages 185-196
Today, under the pressure of globalisation, massification and technological development, marketisation of higher education, which enhances universities' autonomy and promotes competition among them for resources, students and prestige, is a worldwide policy trend. Global market dynamics have substantially modified higher education systems and institutions, by deregulating the field and opening it up to market forces, both in the form of growth of the non-traditional institutions and the introduction of the market mechanism in the public sector. In Japan, traditionally known for its strict state control over the higher education system, marketisation of its higher education system got into full swing since the beginning of the 1990s, when the Standards for the Establishment of Universities (SEU)-ministerial ordinance governing university organisation and activities-were significantly simplified, allowing universities to organise their own curriculum. After the turn of the century, marketisation was accelerated by the Koizumi government which promoted structural reform of the entire administration, for which neoliberalism and new public management (NPM) offered a theoretical basis. During the Koizumi administration, in the area of higher education, a 21^<st> century COE programme-large-scale competitive funding programme-was launched in 2002. The SEU were further simplified and transformed into minimum standards in 2003. For-profit universities came to be allowed on a trial basis in the same year. Finally, in 2004, national universities were incorporated. At the same time, in addition to encouragement and then requirement of self-evaluation, ex-post measures, such as third-party evaluation and performance-based funding schemes, have been taken, complementing reduced ex ante control, to assure the quality of higher education as well as to hold institutions accountable for public funding. Ironically, these measures-introduced in the context of enhancement of university autonomy-have scrupulously restricted universities' activities to the extent of stifling creativity. Furthermore, because of the Matthew effect, competition tends to entrench the existing hierarchy in favour of large research universities, particularly former imperial universities, and to homogenise institutions' activities in the same layer due to imitation of good practices and avoidance of high-risk activities, thus reducing institutional diversity and the likelihood of 'scientific novelty'. In the face of globalisation and massification, marketisation of higher education, or enhancement of institutional autonomy, is ineluctable for any system, in which universities offer diversified education and research on their own initiatives. However, the present Japanese system seems too restrictive for universities to be innovative, at risk of lowering the quality of their education and research, in spite of numerous deregulatory measures, mainly because of quality control systems that put too much emphasis on the measurement of outcomes. For the Japanese system to be effective, it requires an entire revision in the direction of enhancing university autonomy. In particular, performance evaluation and performance-based funding schemes should be revised.
