There are various relationship dynamics between a private university and its founder, an educational corporation, and this relationship is also impacted by the fact that the underlying laws differ for each. However, the nature of these relationships has not yet been clarified.

Referring to presidents’ remarks at a conference held for them, this study suggests a relationship between a university’s chairman, board of directors, and president. Twenty- six presidents were divided into three types depending on how familiar they were with their own universities: Type 1, in which the president is elected and the members of the board of directors are concerned graduates; Type 2, in which the president is chosen by election and the members of the board of directors besides alumni; and Type 3, in which the president is appointed by the board of directors and in which chairmen are well- informed about their universities rather than presidents in many cases. Together, these three types play an important role in the relationship between the chairman and president of a private university.

In recent years, universities have been expected to play an important role in drug development; however, they cannot manufacture and sell products as a business. This is owing to a view of the Ministry of Legal Affairs expressed in 1950 that denied pharmaceutical manufacturing as a business by government agencies, including national universities. The problem stemmed from pharmaceutical manufacturing by the Institute for Infectious Diseases at the University of Tokyo; it was stipulated in the Regulations of the Institute for Infectious Diseases, but was removed from the institute’s jurisdiction in 1947. First, to clarify the background of the problem, old documents of the institute describing the negotiation process with the Ministry of Health and Welfare were examined. Based on these documents, the Ministry of Legal Affairs’ view was interpreted, and the premise was argued to be different between the present national university corporations and government agencies of the postwar period. Next, by analyzing the institute’s accounting slips, it was revealed that the pharmaceutical marketing and manufacturing business by the institute had transformed in the transfer of test manufactured products to the private sector, and research was separated from the business and incorporated into the research system of the university.

This study examines the roles of professionals in service-learning and community engagement and their commitment to civic learning in U.S. higher education. By analyzing the case of Middlebury College, this study illustrates the three roles of professionals— director, student affairs, and community collaboration—based on their disciplines and professional experience. These professionals are committed to students, communities, the faculty, and administrators with different purposes and approaches depending on their roles. The student affairs role includes serving as a student mentor and forging authentic relationships to develop civic skills and leadership among students. Community collaboration fosters critical consciousness among students and builds reciprocal partnerships with the community, which disrupts unequal power differentials. Both student affairs and community collaboration professionals are critically aware of social problems when committing to students. The director and the other professionals involved in student affairs and community collaboration who have prior teaching experience support the faculty in enhancing the quality of civic learning and implementing the experiential education model at the college. Thereafter, the director engages the university administrators to further institutionalize civic learning, while working within the structural constraints of the institution. The research outcomes provide implications on how to promote civic learning through service-learning and to consider the issues of practitioners in Japanese universities.

In this study, we estimate the social rate of return to university education in Japan, considering the possibility of dropping out and repeating a grade. Although many studies have assessed the rate of return on university education, most have measured the rate of return by assuming that all students who enter a university will graduate without dropping out or repeating a grade. The percentage of students who drop out or are held back depends on the university’s type of establishment (public or private) and the level of admission severity. Such differences may lead to considerable variation in expected returns, depending on the university and faculty. We consider this and estimate the social rate of return for groups of universities and faculties categorized by type of establishment and admission severity. The results show that the rates of return to some private universities are lower if we consider the dropout and repeating years, and suggest the need for focused policies.

This paper discusses the management of private universities, and focuses on the financial indicators in the 2013 revised accounting standards for school corporations, categorizing the management of private universities in terms of location and scale through finance.

The results of the discussion confirm that using the revised financial indicators is effective for understanding private university management following the revision of the accounting standards for school corporations, and that, the operation of local small-scale private universities remains relatively difficult because of the effects of location and scale, even after the revision of the accounting standards for school corporations.

These findings indicate the following: (1) a categorization method combining financial indicators can reveal the state of private universities, (2) a categorization method combining financial indicators can be useful for planning for private universities according to the categorization method, and (3) private university management decisions concerning finances should be analyzed by combining multiple financial indicators.

This study focuses on MARCH Universities (Meiji University, Aoyama Gakuin University, Rikkyo University, Chuo University, and Hosei University), which have the same level of difficulty in admission, and elucidates the process by which students choose a university.

This study uses data from an interview survey conducted with students at Meiji University and analyzes the process by which students decide which university to enter by categorizing the process into three stages: (1) choosing the universities to apply to, (2) comparing the ranking of aspirations, and (3) deciding the university to enter.

The results of the data analysis can be summarized as follows. In stage (1), choosing the universities to apply to, the students narrowed down their choices by focusing on the “difficulty in admission,” the “academic field,” and the “impression and school culture.” In stage (2), comparing the ranking of aspirations, in addition to the influence of the “difficulty in admission” and “impression and school culture,” the influence of “educational content,” “location,” and “school facilities” became relatively stronger. In stage (3), deciding the university to enter, while “impression and school culture” had a strong influence, factors such as “student life” and “employment” influenced students’ choice.

These findings indicate that the factors that influence students’ selection differ in each process, and as the process progresses, factors with practical value gain more significance.

The purpose of this research was to clarify the process of establishing Akita International University (AIU) by considering why a public university with global and distinctive education was established in Akita. To this end, I analyzed the discussions of the Review Committee and the Preparatory Committee for the Establishment in which AIU was conceptualized. I also obtained information from the minutes of the prefectural assembly, commemorative magazines of AIU and the Minnesota State University-Akita campus (MSU-A), and books written by Mineo Nakajima, the first president of AIU.

As a result, it became clear that although initial discussions were held with MSU-A in mind, the policy shifted to a more global-minded one. President Nakajima and other members of the committee believed that liberal arts education was important, and to elicit its unique and global characteristics, AIU was established as a new public university corporation with the support of the Ministry of Education.

The purpose of this study was to clarify the views of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) regarding preparing college teaching in the United States during the 1930s, which have not been previously clarified. To accomplish this, the position of the AAUP was confirmed from information on the history of the association’s founding, the number of members of its bulletin, and its views on preparing college teaching, which were clarified from the activities and reports of the Committee on College and University Teaching (Committee U) established in 1932 and the discussions of its members.

Consequently, it became clear that the membership base of the association had expanded since its founding and relaxation of the limitation on the number of years. Committee U was established based on the recognition of the need for professors themselves to conduct research on college and university teaching, and it was revealed that the committee emphasized the complementary relationship between education and research in preparing college teaching while maintaining a distance from educationalist ideas. Finally, it was shown that these facts may be a factor in preparing college teaching from a broad perspective in graduate education in the United States.

This paper discusses the ways in which university faculty members perceive incompatibility between teaching and research, and how they are affected by variables such as teaching activities, work hours, and other individual and organizational factors. It pays special attention to differences based on the characteristics of academic fields, namely, the varying degrees of the teaching-research nexus and the relationship between specific teaching practices and their workload. The researchers analyzed the results of a questionnaire survey conducted by the Center for Research on University Management and Policy in 2019.

Academic fields were categorized into four areas: humanities; social sciences; mathematics, biology and agriculture; and engineering and information sciences. This categorization allowed the researchers to illustrate the differences derived from the modes of knowledge production and education shared by members of each field. It also provided further insights than the dichotomous division of hard and soft sciences, on which previous studies were sometimes based. The researchers also incorporated the following three aspects to analyze the determinants of incompatibility: (1) mismatch of teaching and research, (2) lack of research resources, and (3) excessive teaching workload. Utilizing this framework, this paper presents insights into how the perception of teaching-research incompatibility is influenced by both academic fields and the determinants of these three aspects.

This study attempts to take a view of university reform in Germany and discuss the significance of changes in the German educational system. German universities have entered the "universal phase" in education while maintaining their traditional multi-track education system. The aim of this study was to examine the situation in Germany, which differs from other countries with single-track education systems. We discuss the implications of the case of Germany by looking at data and materials on the principles and mechanisms used to "open the university" in a multi-track education system. Germany has developed a "qualification framework" system based on the principle of "permeability," which allows all students, regardless of social background, whether they attended any type of school, in general education or vocational education and training, to benefit from the system. This policy of "opening the university" is being promoted. However, this practice is not uniform and takes various forms at each university.

China launched the Double World-Class Project in 2015 as a new strategy to strengthen the competitiveness of its universities, especially in research. The word "double" in the project’s name refers to the fact that this strategy focuses on both institutional and disciplinary units, which is considered to be a new trend in research promotion policies in China. However, attempts to cultivate key disciplines in universities have already been made since the 1980s.

This article reviews the policies implemented by the Chinese central government to promote research in universities since the 1980s and summarizes their characteristics by purpose, funding source, and function of the universities selected.

In the 1980s, the central government selected and funded a few universities and several disciplines as the locus for research in the whole country, which served as the beginning of Chinese research promotion policies in universities. From the 1990s to 2015, the 211 Project and 985 Project selected more universities and set goals to cultivate World-Class universities as well as universities important for local and certain industries. Although the projects were launched by the central government, local governments also played a significant role in implementing policies by funding local universities. This attempt has been inherited by the Double World-Class Project since 2017, with many local governments participating in the cultivation of first-class universities and disciplines.

Focusing on the “New American University” concept of Crow and Dabars (2020) as a new research university model, this study presents a theoretical framework for understanding the competitive structure of the “Harvard model” and the “ASU model” in the higher education market based on a case study on the management strategy of Arizona State University (ASU), and clarifies their characteristics.

These two models of research universities have different strategies in terms of whether they are inclusive or exclusive, as contrasted with being “excellence-driven” or having “ac- cessible excellence.” What the new wave of research university models questions is the na- ture of a successful model in traditional research universities, which has become monolithic and resistant to change. We must seek to reconcile excellence and accessibility in research universities without justifying the inaction of highly selective universities that contribute to their privileging of research universities.

Discussion of private university governance, which is difficult to discern from the outside, is on the rise. The Private Schools Act regulates private universities uniformly regardless of size, but even though such universities range from large-scale institutions with tens of thousands of students to small ones with fewer than a hundred students, nothing is known about the real state of university governance from the perspective of size. However, each year, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) conducts a survey on actual conditions in schools targeted at private universities and gathers basic data on governance, but the results of the survey are not made public. This research project made an information disclosure request to MEXT and aggregated and analyzed survey results using data other than non-disclosed individual data items.

The research focuses on size and clarifies one aspect of the specific state of governance in highly diverse private universities, looks at decision-making and checks on associated processes, compares the adequacy of such functions by institution size, points out issues in private university governance, and suggests a course for resolving such issues.

This study explores the mechanisms of career decisions among master’s degree students who do not wish to advance to doctoral programs, focusing on their perceptions of the relationship between universities and society and the factors that generate these perceptions. The decreasing number of doctoral students has been attributed to financial difficulties during students’ studies and the difficulty of finding employment after obtaining a doctorate, as well as poor employment conditions after. In addition to these problems, interviews with students reveal that the mechanisms that exclude doctoral study as a career choice also consist of social stresses and anxieties arising from a perception that being a researcher is a career that only has indirect impacts on society, and from a belief that research must be practical to be of social significance. This study also suggests that such social stress and anxiety may contribute to postgraduates’ underestimation of their research skills and aptitudes, which is one of the reasons for not going on to doctoral studies and is often perceived as a personal issue, as well as the potential for institutional and policy approaches to address them.

This study examines the activities and organizational characteristics of unions in private universities in Japan. Despite unions in universities exerting some influence on university decision-making, such unions have rarely been discussed in Japanese higher education research. This study uses a case study of a university faculty and a staff union to conduct a historical analysis by classifying the activities into four categories: economic struggles, demand for democratization of the university, organizational strengthening and cultural welfare activities, and political and solidarity activities. The analysis found that universi- ty unions not only negotiate working conditions but also engage in activities to democ- ratize the university and supplement its welfare functions. Meanwhile, the emphasis and content of these activities have changed over time. Additionally, the characteristics of the organization demonstrate that workers from different professions work together and that the democratic system, with no fixed committee members, allows the union to represent all members. While this characteristic can be considered the strength of the union, it could also trigger internal conflicts owing to differences in positions between occupations and avoidance of a role in the union.

This paper examines the changes in administrative personnel assignments after the incorporation of national universities from the perspective of strategic human resource management (SHRM). SHRM assumes that organizational strategies determine the human resource management (HRM) approach and that the HRM approach affects organizational performance.

The three main issues discussed in this paper are as follows: (1) The national government and national universities have changed their HRM policies, such as the location of personnel authority for national university administrative managers and the selection of personnel for managerial positions, based on their strategies. (2) The career resources of managers have changed as a result. (3) These changes vary from university to university.

This paper points out that the reason for this change in career resources is that after incorporation, the budget and personnel systems change, and there are fewer situations that required negotiations with the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and more situations that require familiarity with the university’s internal situation and understanding of the university’s unique systems.

This study suggests a way forward to examine the relationship between strategy, human resource management, and organizational performance in national universities.

This paper aims to clarify and document basic information on professional vocational universities and professional vocational junior colleges, focusing on staff organization and curriculum, based mainly on application documents for the approval of the establishment of universities and junior colleges. Six professional vocational universities and one professional vocational junior college established in 2021 were analyzed. The research method and framework followed in this study were based on a study by Ogata, Tanimura, and Tateishi (2021), who investigated nine professional vocational universities and two professional vocational junior colleges established by 2020. While we cannot say that the following is a tendency peculiar to this higher education system, and it is too early to draw conclusions at this stage, there are some characteristics, such as the ratio of full-time faculty members and the ratio of practice/practical classes provided, that differ between the engineering and health fields.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the characteristics of the persistence and attrition of responses in a panel survey of young people. The subject of analysis is the Panel Survey of College Students, which was designed as a survey to be answered online once a year for a total of four times, from respondents’ third year of college in 2013 to their second year after graduation in 2016. For both the online monitor respondents and the respondents who were asked to cooperate by their professors, the higher the percentage of grades of "superior" and "A," the more attrition tended to be controlled. On the other hand, the former was characterized by a higher attrition rate than the latter.