The primary purpose of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) is to protect the rights and welfare of human subjects in medical research. IRB approval for non-medical research in areas such as social and behavioral sciences is also required at some universities, although this research is exempt from governmental regulation in Japan. This paper will discuss the need for IRB’s prior approval for non-medical research from the academic freedom perspective. Analysis of the risk to human subjects and outcomes of IRB approval was conducted using the minutes of IRB meetings at universities published by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. While many of the non-medical research proposals could be characterized as posing less than minimal risk to the participants, those proposals were not easily approved. This study suggests the development of less restrictive alternatives to manage and control non-medical research projects.

University campus is a foundational space for teaching and research in higher education institutions. The campuses of national universities in Japan are located across the country and considered as a knowledge center within their respective communities. The policy and management of the campuses so far have been concentrating on improving their space and quality; however, the concept of campus will require transformation in the future in terms of management due to societal changes as well as the changing roles of national universities. This paper aims to develop a new theoretical framework for campus management at Japanese national universities, by reviewing previous studies and emerging models for university campuses in other developed nations.

This study clarifies the influence of public opinion on policy making by focusing on the public comment system. After explaining the outline of the public comment system, quantitative characteristics of public opinion regarding education policy based on the data collected from The Office of E-Government and Information Technology (e-Gov) from 2003 to 2013 are analyzed. Furthermore, the influence of each opinion received through the public comment system on higher education policy making is discussed. We conducted a limited analysis on the degrees of interest in each policy because the quantitative responses of public opinion to each policy and the contents of individual or drafted opinion are only obtainable through e-Gov data. A detailed case study is required for future research to better understand the substantial influence of public opinion on policy making.

This article discusses the change in the undergraduate curriculum at Harvard University in the early twentieth century. In the late nineteenth century, President Charles W. Eliot introduced the students’ free electives system that encouraged students to choose courses as per their interests and study plans. At that time, this system had great influence over other American colleges and universities. Moreover, this system aided the establishment of several new academic fields in Harvard and transformed it to a “ university” in the true sense of the word. However, Eliot’s free elective system was quite radical compared with other forms of elective curricula. Eliot served for forty years, and Harvard changed its direction after his retirement. A. Lawrence Lowell, Eliot’s successor, adopted a curriculum called “concentration and distribution.” Eliot’s elective system has been widely known, and Lowell’s reform has been discussed in a few studies. This article discusses the transition process from Eliot’s “ free elective system” to Lowell’s “ concentration and distribution” system on the basis of original Harvard records and provides an outlook for future researches.

Beginning in 2004, national universities in Japan have moved into a new stage of corporatization. Performance-oriented policy was introduced for the allocation of government grants in 2010, with the aim of enhancing the productivity and operational efficiency of national universities. In 2008, the Japan National University Evaluation Committee conducted an investigation and analysis of the accomplishments of national universities toward the set mid-term targets and undertook a comprehensive achievement evaluation of project targets to investigate the current state of education and research, with evaluation as the premise. They analyzed the quality of education and research levels according to “The Performance Evaluation Regulation of National University Legal Person and University Jointly Exploit Sector in Midterm Target Period.” This study uses data envelopment analysis to analyze productivity and efficiency of corporatized national universities. It measures productivity indicator value (MI) through a Correlated Component Regression (CCR) model and measures pure efficiency value by a Banker-Charnes-Cooper (BBC) model and uses Pearson’s Correlation analysis to analyze the correlation between the productivity and efficiency of corporatized national universities and their first-stage evaluation results.

President Shigeru Nambara was the first elected president at the Tokyo Imperial University after World War II. During his presidency, Tokyo Imperial University changed its name to the University of Tokyo under the new educational system introduced by the Japanese Government. This paper traces President Nambara’s major achievements in the process of founding the University of Tokyo and discusses the characteristics of his actions, specifically focusing on educational reform. Among other things, it examines the post-war reconstruction of the university, the Education System Research Committee, the Faculty of College of Arts and Sciences, and the Faculty of Education.

This paper clarifies the malfunctions and insufficiencies of the education policy and system of the Japan Defense Ministry and Self-Defense Forces (SDF). Currently, there is a low number of SDF officers who hold Master’s degrees compared with foreign armed forces, so this paper also addresses the reason why an SDF personnel cannot enjoy the opportunity of attending Professional Military Education (PME) as the same level of higher education (i.e., above Master’s degree level courses) outlined by the Council for Examination of Drastic Reforms in the Personnel Field of the Defense Force. I analyzed personal biography data of 91 Marine Generals and discovered the following three findings: (1) the excellence of the United States Marine Education Policy and system (similar to PME); (2) the efficient education system of the United States Marine Corps (USMC) University, which includes Marine Corps War College, School of Advanced Warfighting, and Marine Corps Command & Staff College; and (3) the healthy competition in promotional systems in the USMC that will contribute to the Japan Defense Ministry and SDF policy-making in the education system reforms.