In the present paper, the current status and future of recurrent education in Japan were studied and analyzed from the viewpoint of the function and role of specialized education.
The term “specialized education” is usually used in a rather wide meaning. However, here it is limited to its particular aspect centering around the problem of special training school or a subject the author has long been concerned with.
Being an effective educational institution after the secondary school, the special training school has played a great role in the specialized and professional education. Particularly, its special course is called as the special traing college, where people learn for practical experts in a variety of fields. In comparison with the university and junior college, the special training college has a comparatively free organization of curriculum and it practises an education closely related to the profession and well adpated to the actual life. Therefore, many adults as well as youth actually attend the special training college. Thus, this college is positively made use of as an institution of the recurrent education.
Based on the actual status and its recognition, problems were discussed as to what function and role the special education plays in the recurrent education.
As features of the modern age, there is a tendency of more specialization and subdivision of profession and job due to changes in the structure of industry. Thus, various practical specialists have been and are being trained. In this case, there is a problem that compared to the traditional profession, practical specialists in new fields may be in an unfavorable condition and limited in opportunities in continuing their professional learning after graduation from school, namely, that there may be differences in opportunities of receiving the recurrent education between different species of profession. To correct such differences, policies were devised and proposed. They include improvements of the professional status through the professional organization, practical use and investigation of the coordinating function of the government in its administration and policy selection, investigation of the professional qualification system in the ideal form, and, further, development of the ability and skill of experts and practical experts by providing more opportunities of study and training and by making use of the existing educational and training institutions.

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These days there seems to be a “qualification fad” with the publication of many books that encourage the obtainment of occupational qualifications and the trend in which university students attend vocational training school in addition to their university courses in order to get qualifications.
In Japan, it has been shown that there has been different access to social resources depending on socioeconomic status or educational career.Then does the obtainment of occupational qualifications result in the successful attainment of social status? If they do, in which strata does this occur? Or do these qualifications have no effect on one's social status? Using data from the 1995 SSM Survey, this paper investigates whether occupational qualifications increase an individual's chances of acquiring social resources, such as income and occupational prestige.
Independent of the factors of academic career or socioeconomic status, some analyses suggest that these qualifications are profitable for women but not for men.
This is partly because of the difference in jobs available to men and women. Although it is taken for granted that men should work, women have limited opportunities to get jobs. This difference between men and women also occurs due to the nature of the qualifications themselves. In other words, some of the qualifications are necessary for continuing to work in some “male-dominated” occupations, and thus, such qualifications do not have any effect on one's income or social status.

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