It has been 10 years since the Japanese Association of Higher Education Research (JAHER) was established in 1997. There is no doubt that over this long period of time, JAHER has had a decisive impact on the study of higher education. Then what kind of “knowledge” did this Association accumulate, elaborate and legitimate in order to carry out the study of higher education as a discipline during these 10 years? How did it organize researchers, graduate students and administrators into an academic group? In this paper, I examine the activities and role of JAHER in these 10 years and present my findings as outlined below.

　 At the present time, the total number of the members of this Association has reached the 500 mark, and 60% of them are faculty members of universities and colleges. Since 2000, a number of Higher Education Centers have been established all over Japan and the number of members drawn from the teaching staff of these centers has increased remarkably. The number of young graduate members has also been increasing, but the percentage is still low. This means that systematizing the training young scholars in the study of higher education is still in the initial stages. Also the number of members drawn from the administrative staff of higher education institutions is increasing significantly. Members are not drawn from specific universities or sectors, but from a variety of institutions and from all over Japan. This Association does not have strong ties with the other two societies concerned with the study of higher education, but does have strong ties with other societies, especially the Japan Society of Educational Sociology and the Japan Society for the Study of Education. But on the basis of an analysis of the themes of presentations in conferences, I have been able to identify a functionally progression among societies in terms of classifying knowledge. This society has concentrated specifically on the field of “university evaluation.” From an analysis of the keywords in the titles of presentations at this Association’s conferences, not only the traditional research style, but also a problem-solving approach can be found. This means that not only an academic but also a practical orientation vis-avis research can be confirmed.

　 In this paper, the achievements and trends in research on the history of universities and higher education carried out in the past ten years in Japan have been reviewed on the basis of a tripartite division into the three geographical areas providing data for the research, that is, higher education in Japan, in other Asian countries, and in Europe and the U.S.A.

　 Concerning historical studies on universities and higher education in Japan, about a thousand books and articles have been published during the period under review, evidence that the theme is attracting the interests of scholars from various disciplines. It could be said that the history of universities is now established as a sub-field of the historical sciences alongside women’s history, the history of minorities, etc.

　 One of the driving forces that has facilitated historical studies on universities in Japan can be idenetified as the project to write and publish a half-centenary commemorative history of universities newly founded just after the Second World War. In the process of carrying out this project, efforts were made to collect and to utilize available materials, as well as to organize a system aimed at structuring research on university history. As a result, archives on the history of a particular university were set up at many universities including several leading national ones.

　 As for historical studies on higher education in other Asian countries (except China), no significant progress has been made, while on the other hand, contemporary and comparative studies on higher education have developed conspicuously. In particular, it has been almost impossible to identify any research output on higher education in the pre-modern period has been recognized. In contrast, it is interesting to note that remarkable progress has been made in historical studies on Chinese higher education.

　 Among a small number of historical studies on higher education in other Asian countries except for China, pioneering research has been carried out, to some extent, on such themes as the history of South-Asian higher education, colonial higher education, the education of overseas students, and international education,. One factor which has facilitated this progress has been the organization of scholars working on the colonial education into various learned societies.

　 It is also noteworthy that research output by overseas students from Asian countries has been increasing. It is expected that they will form a new generation of young researchers in the field of historical studies on Asian higher education.

　 Historical studies on European and American higher education have now been established as a sub-field of the historical sciences in Europe and America. The mainstream approach has been to take a very wide approach locating the research within the context of intellectual, social and comparative history.

　 On the other hand, historical studies on European and American higher education carried out during the past ten years in Japan were not always so productive, compared to the results achieved in the preceding two decades. There is now, it must be admitted, quite a wide gap in the front line of research as between Japan on the one hand and Europe and the U.S.A. on the other.

　 One of the factors which can be cited as having caused this gap is the spread of a neo-liberalist perspective in recent higher education reform. The main focus in research concerning higher education has shifted rapidly from a historical approach to more practical reform-orientated aspects. The basic and fundamental disciplines such as history now tend to be neglected as non-utilitarian subjects in the Japanese academic world. Practical utilitarianism might be a key watchword in this new age of globalization, but a blight new future for higher education will not be realized without an accurate knowledge and understanding of its past.

　 This paper aims to examine trends in comparative research over the past decade within the framework of the Japanese Association on Higher Education Research, to identify the contribution made by research on higher education in Japan, and to offer a perspective on future issues and prospects. With these aims in mind, the paper asks firstly what comparative research is, then examines the meaning and significance of comparative research within the field of research on higher education, and concludes that a knowledge of historical details and contemporary trends are both indispensable factors in comparative research. Furthermore, the paper categorizes the directions of comparative research from 3 perspectives, and through this kind of analysis, clarifies the characteristics of comparative research over the past decade as well as hopefully offering thoughts on issues that will occur over the next 10 years.

　 In terms of the specifics of the comparative research studies that constitute the data for this paper, the author has limited himself to the papers contributed to the Japanese Journal of Higher Education Research. The reason for this is that the papers that make up the contents of the Journal, regardless of whether they are solicited or unsolicited, can be thought of as reflecting, to a greater or lesser extent, in line with the passage of time, the collective values of the Association as a body of researchers.

　 With a view to acquiring a sense of the direction of future research in the area of economic analysis of higher education in Japan, this paper takes up four topics, comparing research carried out in Japan with research carried out overseas. Firstly, most research work uses economic theories and models, but recently there have been examples of research work in which non-economic factors such as particular characteristics of universities, or a sociological approach have been introduced. Secondly, marketization theories of higher education have been stressed by a number of economic scholars who are active in the higher education field, though in Japan counter-arguments and skepticism regarding marketization are very deeprooted. There is a need for research that gives deliberate consideration to the special characteristics of higher education. Thirdly, there is a tendency for research to be elaborated and differentiated in respect of particular issues. There is a need for research that adopts a broader temporal and spatial perspective. Finally, it is important to accumulate more evidence-based researches which both criticize and contribute to higher education policy.

　 It is possible to distinguish two different ways of distibuting government resources to higher education : one could be termed “institutional funding”, in which government allocates budgets to higher educational institutions and those institutions then expend the budgets by carrying out education and research; another way is “individual funding”, in which individual researchers or particular project teams are given financial resources by government to conduct their research. Funding for higher education in Japan has recently shifted from the institutional to the individual approach. In the light of this shift in financing higher education, this paper describes recent trends and future research topics in the areas of funding, financial management, administration and control of higher education institutions. These areas of study are particularly important for both national and private universities in terms of sustaining a high quality of education and research at a time of financial stringency on the part of government and a fall in the eighteen-year old college-going population.

　 Nowadays, there is a tendency for many higher education studies in Japan to be strongly colored by implications for higher education policies or practices. It is true that this tendency is not itself problematic. However, if it becomes too strong, it creates a context in which we cannot necessarily make full use of sociological imagination in higher education studies. In particular, two concepts that make it difficult to use sociological imagination are “grand term” and “popularized empiricism”, both of which are analogies of ideas of C. W. Mills.

　 “Grand term”, which seems at a glance to have the potential to help us grasp many worldwide problems, is in fact an abstract and theoretically poorly developed current term, which causes us to stop thinking and acts as a barrier to our use of sociological imagination. And as for “popularized empiricism”, although it gives the appearance of being empirical while lacking methodological rigor, it too paralyzes our sense of reality by its superficially persuasive appeal to numbers.

　 With a view to solving these problems, this paper suggests, from a theoretical perspective, that an effective measure would be the formation of links between higher education studies and sociological theories, and that more use should be made of sociological notions in higher education studies. The paper also suggests, from a methodological perspective, that increased effort should be put into more minute sampling strategies and that a useful tool is comprehensive research that combines panel surveys and qualitative methods.

　 University education is entering an age of drastic change as shown by such innovations as the introduction of university evaluation, regulations to make Faculty Development（FD）obligatory, and so on. University staff are expected to develop and implement various ideas aimed at the unremitting improvement of educational activities. The diversity of such activities should be sufficiently wide to enable them to be theoretically integrated or brought together into a more general expression or theory. With that aim in mind, various kinds of data related to such activities should be collected. Regarding quantitative data, the norm is to summarize individual items of data into statistical form. In the educational situation, where the responsibility for improving lectures falls on individual teachers, we need to be able to fully comprehend not only quantitative statistics but also information regarding the way in which individual sets of data deviate from the given statistics. Moreover, it may be possible to obtain from qualitative data some useful strategies that will help us to conduct similar practices in similar contexts, even though the resulting implications might be less reliable and more prone to bias than in the case of quantitative data. An effective method of utilizing data from individual case studies is to connect it with a higher-order framework, such as the context of an entire university education system or with a theoretical model in a given research field. It is desirable for us to continue to refine and familiarize ourselves with qualitative methods in higher education research.

　 In 1998, just at the time when the Japanese Association for Higher Education Research（JAHER）was founded, the revision of university establishment criteria became the central point and the main driving force in a policy switch in Japanese higher education from a focus on regulation to a focus on competition. At the same time, emphasis was put at a policy level on self-evaluation, and the resulting imposition of compulsory self-evaluation and the speed of moves toward compulsory third-party evaluation suggested that decisions were being made without adequate forethought. In the face of these trends, researchers in higher education sounded alarm signals and stressed the need for caution. On the one hand, importance was attached to the need for quality assurances, while on the other hand, the links between university evaluation and financial distribution mechanisms were strengthened, with the result that in the context of tremendous pressure on autonomous evaluation by universities, researchers had no option but to try and solve the problems of evaluation by adopting a technological approach. It can be reasonably expected that the actual progress and practical application of university evaluations from now on will encourage Japanese university educators to change their ideas about university evaluation and treat it as a matter of course, and at the same time serve to develop education oriented toward outcome assessment and the study of higher education generally.

　 Recent university reform in Japan can be seen as something close to a jump from an elite model to a universal one, as described by Martin A. Trow, because it is the first major structural change since the postwar reform of 1949. The deregulation of university establishment criteria has led to progress in curriculum reforms and to the dissolution of many liberal arts faculties. The papers presented at the annual meetings of this association have covered many elements of the composition of university reform. A summary of research trends selected from among these follows below.

　 1. University evaluation : Three main themes are involved in this topicinternal review, quality assurance, and the provision of information on the university including evaluations. In the first instance, case studies of American and European university evaluations are presented in Japan, and these are then utilized in efforts to introduce and gain acceptance for the practice of university evaluation in Japan.

　 2. Universities and science and technology policy : The Basic Law on Science and Technology promulgated in 1995 has served as the impetus for the expansion of Japanese government investments in research and development. Although some research deals with industry-academia cooperation in the area of science policy research, only a few examples touch on academic research activities conducted in universities.

　 3. Policy process and its development : The following three items have been taken up. The first is the process of transfer from university to work. The issue is made more complicated because it spans both industry and two ministries with jurisdiction over education and labour matters respectively. The second is the issue of new relationships with government ministries with responsibility for welfare, industry and so on, and with international organizations such as the World Trade Organization. The third issue is that of developments in the analysis of the policy-making process in the field of higher education.

　 In conclusion, it is noted that areas where this association is particularly able to contribute to policy-making efforts are those involving comprehensive investigative research and those involving multiple government agencies.

　 This paper is a summation of the papers contributed to a special 10th anniversary commemorative edition of this journal. Three problems are identified in terms of key issues in higher education research in recent years.

　 The first is that the model or concept of a university which has constituted the basic precondition for higher education research hitherto has all but collapsed over the past ten years. The spread of market-based mechanisms and university evaluation serve as the factors in the background to change during this period. Unlike the period of formative evaluation as represented by self-checking and selfevaluation, the present meaning of evaluation has clearly acquired a competitive focus. If we consider the matter from such perspectives as achieving an efficient distribution of limited public funds, or satisfying demands for accountability, then change is inevitable, but there is a continuing increase in the number of phenomena that are contradictory to our traditional ideas of what a university should stand for.

　 The second issue is a problem of the rapid increase in facilities such as higher education centers, to which researchers in higher education are attached. An increase in the number of such facilities and a concurrent rise in the demand for higher education researchers is welcome news for the development of this research area. However, half the working time of a researcher is spent on planning and arranging events in the university and only half on independent academic research. Since it is expected that persons who become researchers will be effective immediately, researchers from various disciplines are collected together in a center, but within a center, there is no educational training system to foster and develop the successor generation of higher education researchers.

　 The third issue is about improvement in the quality of higher education research. While it is a noticeable feature that higher education research attracts researchers from various disciplines, neither the leading ideas and theories nor the fundamental methodology of their former domains have been sufficiently incorporated into higher education research. It is for this reason that higher education research continues to subdivide with no set purpose in mind and that there is a constant fear of fragmentation. In order for individual research results to be firmly connected together and accumulated, it is indispensable that fundamental research methodologies are set in place and shared. If this is not done, it will be difficult to form the contents of higher education research as an academic discipline.

　 Overcoming and finding solutions to the three points mentioned above will serve as the major issues for the next ten years.

　 In Japan to date, the main function of graduate school programs has been to produce academic researchers, and professional degree programs as such have not been fully developed. The chief characteristic of the funding pattern of graduate education in Japan has been its simplicity and lack of diversity. However, the recent development of professional degree programs and the rapid increase in external research grants have increased the potential for change and diversification of the funding pattern.

　 When looking at the funding of graduate education it is necessary to differentiate the possibilities according to the various types of graduate programs. American research universities have developed a variety both of graduate programs and funding methods, and an examination of information about graduate education funding at American universities seems likely to yield information of benefit to Japan. This paper analyses the diverse patterns of funding for graduate education on the basis of the data and information obtained from interviews with Deans and Associate Deans of 30 schools or colleges at 20 research universities in the Eastern and Midwestern United States.

　 The findings indicate that there are three typical types of graduate programs, namely ‘a self-supporting type’, ‘a research-dependent type’ and ‘an organizationdependent type’, and if these types are thought of as being joined up in the form of a triangle, a large variety of graduate programs are located within the triangle boundary lines. The paper also discusses the financial contribution that undergraduate programs make to graduate programs, the differences in the allocation of student aid as between research degree students and professional degree students, and the practice of decentralizing the financial management of graduate programs by each school, rather than having them run by a central administration. Lastly, the implications of the findings for Japanese graduate education are presented.

　 Diamond’s model of the “Process for the Development of Educational Programs” provides a valuable overall structure for faculty to use in course and program design. The model serves as a useful “roadmap” to show what the process could ideally be like. The main objective in applying the Diamond model to actual curricular development in universities is to facilitate collaboration between faculty and specialists in teaching and learning improvement.

　 In examining the application of the Diamond model at the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching in the University of Michigan, we found that in addition to its usefulness in curriculum development, several imaginative ways of using it had been identified, including its effectiveness as an inquiry tool in the context of their consultation work and the relevance of its data-collection methods for assessment.

　 Today in Japan, each university is expected to improve the quality of teaching and learning through its own efforts. In the final part of this paper we examine the potential applicability of the Diamond model to the Japanese higher education context. The development and provision of relevant inquiry methods and the strengthening of mechanisms of logistical support are essential in promoting effective dialogue among faculty with the aim of achieving consensus building and sound decision making related to dynamic program development. Such a strategy could be an effective approach to help with the development and enhancement of curricular design and assessment methods in Japanese universities.

　 Since the 1990s, universities in Japan have been obliged to implement selfevaluation of their activities, especially undergraduate education. As a result of various reforms, such as the introduction of student rating of teaching and the obligation to undergo third-party evaluation, universities began to use a variety of evaluation methods. This article focuses on one of the emerging methods, namely Outcomes-Based Approach（OBA）, and discusse 3 questions concerning OBA on the basis of a national survey administered to 1,871 faculties in Japanese universities.

　 Question 1 : To what extent is OBA adopted in the self-evaluation of undergraduate education? Among several evaluation approaches, OBA is the most difficult to use because of the need to assess educational outcomes before making use of it. As outcome assessments in Japanese universities are a fairly new trend, it is anticipated that OBA is less popular than any other approach. The data from the national survey show that the number of faculty using OBA differs according to the focus of the evaluation, but that broadly speaking, it is used less frequently than other approaches.

　 Question 2 : What kind of condition facilitates the adoption of OBA? To answer this question, logistic regression is selected as an analytic method. The dependent variable is the adoption of OBA, and the independent variables comprise 4 concerned with faculty traits and 4 concerned with evaluation conditions. The result indicates that the possibility of adoption increases significantly when a faculty has a clear relationship with a specific occupational field.

　 Question 3 : Is OBA more effective in the improvement of educational conditions/activities than other evaluation approaches? Logistic regression is used again, but this time, the dependent variable is whether or not the improvement occurred. The independent variables are those for Q. 2 and the usage of 4 evaluation approaches. It is found that OBA is effective particularly for the evaluation of faculty organization, admission, and educational methods.

　 The purpose of this paper is to clarify the effectiveness of a new Scholarship system targeted especially at students on Science courses that was established in 1999 by the Japan Scholarship Foundation (Nihon Ikuei- Kai) (since 2004 part of a new body, the Japan Student Services Organization).

　 Until the 1999 reform, the Japan Scholarship Foundation conducted its activities in such a way that they were compatible with the two concepts of “fostering academic ability” and “awarding scholarships.” However, from the point of view of equality of educational opportunity, the Japan Scholarship Foundation established the new Scholarship in 1999, putting more weight on the “scholarship awarding” function and greatly increasing the number of scholarship loan recipients.

　 As a result of the analysis described in this paper, it is shown that as a result of the new scholarship the total number of scholarship students increased and the burden on the household economies of recipients was held down, but that at the end of the period of analysis in 2004, the new scholarship had not always accomplished the envisaged effect of a “scholarship award” and that there was still a need of further reform of the system.