Along with the rising importance of early childhood education, the status of nursery teachers is becoming a topic of discussion. This paper examines a questionnaire survey conducted to analyze the type of educational content required by nursery teacher training schools to ensure high quality training.　The main findings were as follows. First, characteristics of training schools’ educational content are divided into three sections: an emphasis on practical skills, an emphasis on research, and an enhanced nursery education-related curriculum. Second, students’ academic abilities and differences in school terms influence the delivery of educational content. Third, training schools were likely to influence employment opportunities and the evaluation of graduates. Input factors such as academic abilities of students and school term had a significant impact on certain items; process factors including educational content and teachers’ characteristics also influenced other items. Specifically, we found that educational content emphasizing practical skills was the most effective. In recent years, training schools for nursery teachers have developed into four-year university programs. However, it was observed that having a four-year system does not mean its evaluations are always good; in fact, the greatest factor for good evaluations lies in differences in training schools’ educational content.

This paper examines the management and qualitative features of interdisciplinarity through an analysis of subjects at Faculties of Liberal Arts in Japanese universities. I classified the subjects in specialized education by academic discipline. The number of departments was large in interdisciplinary fields. However, observing the number of subjects, the proportion of interdisciplinary fields was the smallest. The same was true of the method of classifying departments into five groups. In the interdisciplinary departments, I pointed out that there are two cases, one focusing on subjects in the Arts field and the other on subjects in Arts fields and Sciences fields in balance. The former proved to be a factor for the gap. When counting frequently occurring words of subjects, terms relating to interactive and collaborative classes appeared.

This study was performed to identify the impacts of implementing the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification (CCEC) in American higher education. Five major findings emerged: (1) the concept of community engagement (CE) became highly valued in higher education; (2) CCEC unified the definition and boundaries of CE; (3) campuses were encouraged to provide clear faculty reward policies for recognizing CE; (4) campuses moved toward campus-wide tracking and assessment plans; and (5) accumulating data from various institutions led to the formation of common platforms to promote comparative studies. In summary, CCEC has acted as an external lever for cultural and institutional shifts on cam¬puses toward institutionalizing CE. However, there is a concern that the classified institutions are biased toward relatively large-scale institutions.

In the United States, the coordinating agencies in each state used to play an important role in developing higher education. Recent research, however, shows that changing political and economic circumstances have made it difficult for such agencies to provide efficient coordination, and structural reforms are expected. The present study focuses on the political debates in 2002, which unexpectedly proposed the closure of the California Postsecondary Education Commission, an internationally praised coordinating agency. This is a case study to explore the logic of eliminating or protecting the organizations that mediate between the state government and the higher education sector. It is hoped that the result will contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms of higher education reform in the US.

In this thesis, a liberal arts curriculum in Japanese universities is analyzed from the viewpoint of the curriculum structure and contents of learning. The analysis identified the following three types of curriculum structures: (1) students learn about specialized fields from the time of admission, (2) students can determine specialized fields after admission, and (3) students learn about various fields without deciding on any specialized field. The analysis clarified that curriculum structure and contents of learning differ depending on type. It is necessary to take into account the three curriculum types to analyze liberal arts curricula in Japanese universities. Furthermore, into which type each school of liberal arts is classified and which learning content each school provides depends on the history of the establishment in question. In addition, the specialized fields offered by the liberal arts schools in Japan are biased toward humanities, social sciences, and interdisciplinary fields.

The incorporated educational institution, which establishes a not-for-profit organization, “university,” can also establish a profit organization, “enterprise.” This paper discusses why many incorporated educational institutions establish enterprises (university- owned enterprises) and how the enterprises contribute to institutes and universities. Data of university-owned enterprises are collected from financial statements prepared by incorporated educational institutions and analyzed on establishment date, capital, and volume of business with universities. Additionally, interviews with university-owned enterprises reveal the enterprises’ business and contribution to universities.

This research studies how a small local university can successfully recover from the challenges of unfilled student capacity, using Kyoai Gakuen University as an example. The university suffered under-enrollment immediately after its establishment in 1999. However, the university filled its capacity in a few years, increasing the number of prospective students and improving the deviation score. We focus on how the university’s organizational culture contributed to the recovery from managerial difficulties. An interview analysis revealed that although “staff meetings” and “the center group system” are not mechanisms that create innovative ideas themselves, they play a role in fostering a sense of ownership. As a result, a cooperative attitude toward devising and realizing ideas across faculty and staff was encouraged, leading to successful coexistence with the local community and strong internal branding.

The training of professional journalists is one of the issues in the Japanese higher education system. There are many negative views on journalism education programs in Japan. Conversely, the journalism education programs in universities based on the model curriculum developed by UNESCO are spreading around the world. In this research, a content analysis was conducted on the UNESCO curriculum. The background, purpose, and composition were analyzed. UNESCO has consistently promoted the necessity of journalism education since its establishment in 1945. The curriculum is limited to journalist training and is composed of occupational training, liberal arts, and theory and ethics in journalism. In addition, this curriculum individually and concretely responds to the ICT revolution and the democratization of developing countries. Based on these points, Japan’s journalism education should be rebuilt.

The purpose of this research is to analyze the influence of the university enrollment capacity in Tokyo on the trend of admission in the university in the neighboring prefecture.

Based on the results of the analysis, the entrance capacity of the neighboring prefecture is stronger than that of Tokyo. The findings showed that girls’ admission trends are more strongly influenced by university enrollment capacity than the admission trends of boys. Furthermore, the enrollment capacity of a high-performing academic university has a stronger influence on the admission trends than the enrollment capacity of a university with low performance.

Since the establishment of the regulation of recruitment systems, a long time has passed for the university graduate labor market. Meanwhile, the violation of the rules was repeated from the influence of the economy, and the timing of job hunting activities changed drastically. In this paper, to deepen an understanding of the market, we focused on how players interacted with rules and classified the times. As a result, we were able to describe characteristic periods.

In addition, using path dependence, we compared and analyzed the university graduate labor market to the new graduate labor market in junior high school and high school with many similarities. This analysis made it possible to find factors that are likely to cause rule violations.

The significance of humanities has been hotly disputed during the 2010s in Japan. However, not enough fundamental study has been made regarding objective and fundamental trends in the humanities and social science fields. This paper examines long- term enrollment and postgraduation trends in the humanities to gain an understanding of the current situation. The followings are main results. First, considering the size of undergraduate enrollment, graduate school is still small. Second, employment rate and education continuance rate are not necessarily in a trade-off relationship. Furthermore, about half of graduates with a master’s degree acquire a job and therefore designing and practicing suitable programs or career support is an urgent issue. Finally, the trends among the subsections of literature, historiography, philosophy, and others are different and this point should be also considered when researching and arguing the humanities.

The purpose of this study is to present a comparative analysis of institutional financial support models of higher education in U.S. public research universities. Over the past decade, public universities in the U.S. have increased tuition to compensate for declining state funding and rising costs. However, some research universities have increased their financial aid budgets to maintain student access and success at the same time. Pennsylvania State University, for example, launched a program, Pathway to Success: Summer Starts, aimed at providing financial aid and educational support to freshmen while simultaneously helping them graduate on time. Compared with research regarding federal and state grants, there has been far less analysis and debate on how institutions provide aid. In this regard, there is a need for detailed institutional studies to explore and identify institutional financial aid policy mechanisms.

Recently, there have been discussions on the correctness of the Japanese government’s university governance reforms without common understanding of the concept of governance between stakeholders in various fields. This paper clarifies the following. The concept of governance has many aspects including internal/external control, inclusion of internal/external diversity, and independence from external powers, especially in higher education involving various stakeholders. Each field has its own key aspect: political studies and public administration include external diversity; business studies include internal control and external diversity; higher education studies and policy, inclusion of internal diversity and independence from external powers. Governance of higher education should be distinguished from that of other fields that contribute to a common understanding between stakeholders. Moreover, knowledge of decision making can contribute to the development of the discussions on university governance.