The Japanese government has promoted evidence-based policy and management in the public sector. Higher education is placed in a crucial area in economic growth strategy.

The Abe administration intends to encourage innovation through university reforms. It presumes that strengthening university research will enhance the competition among universities and contribute to economic growth and improved social life. The policy assumes that both resource allocation for the targeted group and competition within the group would increase its position in world university rankings. The ranking is used as a key performance indicator of evidence in research performance. Given the logic and evidence, we analyze the relationship between resource allocation and research activities, like publications and citations, in the case of Japanese national universities. However, the findings are inconsistent with the story of evidence-based policy. Neither resource allocation policy for targeted universities nor areas significantly contributes to promoting research activities. It shows reforming national universities could not be considered evidence-based policy for higher education.

Recently, higher education reforms in Japan has strengthened the leadership of university presidents. However, very few studies have examined the leadership of university senior managers, and it is hard to identify what the difference is between senior academic managers and senior non-academic managers when it comes to leadership and management competencies. This paper attempts to analyze the present situation and future prospects of developing leadership and management competencies of university senior managers in Japan through a questionnaire survey. The findings indicate that although the top senior managers are required to possess comprehensive abilities, only a few of them attended management and leadership training. Work experience at university is important for senior managers, but at the same time, they have high expectations about external experiences and specialized training.

In this study, we analyzed a survey carried out by CRUMP in 2013 concerning university faculty members. We found that faculty members can be classified into three types by the activities they were interested in. The first group is education and research-oriented. The second group places an emphasis on University management. The third group oscillates between the other two groups. We also analyzed for determinants. Our research questions what is needed in order to motivate faculty members to take on university management issues.

From the analysis, in order to motivate faculty members to seek positions in university management, the President and his/her administration need to operate organization as follows: first, by enhancing personnel management so as to train faculty members to be future university administrators; and second, by building good organizational culture.

These findings may be in contrast to university governance reforms conducted by the Japanese government.

^＊ CRUMP; The Center for Research on University Management and Policy, University of Tokyo.

The regulation of the recruitment system has a history of more than 60 years, but it is still a social problem. I discuss the policy of problem-solving by using game theory in this paper. The reason for using game theory is because by modeling different players such as companies, students and colleges on a common playing field, a unified solution can be obtained.

As a result of the analysis, in between companies, it is to enable the agreement compliance to build a cooperative relationship in the trigger strategy. And in between colleges it is important to comply with the agreement even in the context of a prisoner's dilemma. In addition, under asymmetric information, I also discuss belief of companies and the strategy of students.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the role of a University Research Administrator (URA) in Japan as a new system by comparing it with the functions of research administration (RA) and research development (RD) in the US. The analytic view consists of the following: first, clarifying the change of role of a URA in the US by examining the history of RA and the recent expansion of RD; second, clarifying the function of a URA in Japan by examining the history of RA and the roles of URAs in the new system. For the result, the function of a URA in the US is mostly covered by traditional general administrators in Japanese universities, and the new URA in Japan has functions similar to RD in the US.

The aim of this study is to provide considerations for a measure that will increase the number of international students from developing countries through the analysis of problems that students from these countries faced while studying in Japan. This study focused on and performed analyses on problems specific to students of Least Developed Countries (LDCs), which are countries that exhibit the lowest indicators of socioeconomic development. This survey was conducted among the LDC students via a questionnaire along with an interview in English. The results of this survey were compared with the Japan Student Services Organization’s foreign students’ study. The result showed that many LDC students are enrolled in degree courses in English with a scholarship, and their specific problems were caused by low proficiency in Japanese.

On November 26, 2013, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) announced the National University Reform Plan (NURP), a program based on the guidelines for enhancing the function of national universities and centered on upgrading and strengthening of university governance systems to restructure the functions of universities. As per the NURP, the importance of realizing the functions of national universities in a more full and adequate fashion has come to be emphasized in public policy.

National universities in Japan will soon enter the third medium-term milestone period. Concomitant with this, universities are being called on to demonstrate their unique particularities further and enhance their academic and research functions.

Based on prior research, this paper analyzes the possibilities and trajectory for a radical rethinking of the subsidy allocation rules for operational subsidies to national universities in the third medium-term milestone period.