It is one of the biggest ironies of contemporary Japanese history that the Japan Association of National Universities (JANU), an organization that was originally established to defend the academic freedom and the autonomy of Japanese national universities on 1950, is now acting as an obedient servant to the executors of these two fundamental values of Japanese society. To make how such a shameful degradation could happen intelligible will be the task of future researchers of Japanese contemporary history. What we want to do here is to show how much the intentions of JANU were ignored and betrayed by the whole bureaucracy of Japan in the affairs of university corporations and that they now have every reason to protest against the Bill of National University Corporations and that it is the last chance for them to restore their lost dignity.
When the idea of turning national universities into the Independent Administrative Corporations popped up for the first time on 1997, the JANU didn't support the idea since they thought that the idea was "not appropriate for universities which seek to develop innovative education and a spirit of free inquiry from a long-term point of view".(http://www.kokudaikyo.gr.jp/kanko/txt/h13_5en1.html) It was at the Biannual General Assembly of June, 2000 that they started to work in cooperation with the Ministry of Education to establish the system for national university corporations by participating in Research and Review Conference established by the Minister of Education. JANU's strategy was apparently to exercise their influence over the design of new national university system so that the basic values such as academic freedom and autonomy of university are protected in the new system as much as possible. However, the history since then shows that JANU have made concession after concession until there is nothing for them to concede anymore in the bill of National University Corporations.
The best way to make this process of JANU's retreat clear is to compare several documents reflecting different stages of that process. Take the following three documents as examples.
(A) A Framework for Turning National Universities into Corporations (May 2001)
(B) On a New Vision of "National University Corporations" ( March 2002)
(C) The Bill of National University Corporations (February 2003)
(A) was composed by JANU's Committee for Investigation into the Form of Establishment of National University Corporations, so it shows what JANU wants new system to be like. (B) was composed by Research and Review Conference, whose members include the members of JANU and the officials of the Ministry of Education, so it reflects some kind of compromise between JANU and the Ministry of Education. (C) is the bill discussed in the Diet now and is said to be composed by the officials of the Ministry of Education, Ministry of General Affairs ("Soumusho"), and the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, so it reflects compromises the Ministry of Education was forced to make.
Let's compare the descriptions of the first type of "officials" of national university corporations. "Officials" are the second most important positions in the national university corporations next to the president. There are two types of officials in the system. The second type is called "supervisor" by all of these documents and there is no substantial difference among their descriptions of it. Things are, however, radically different for the first type of officials, which is called "vice president" by (A) and (B) and "trustee" by (C). The followings are three documents' descriptions of it.
(A) "In addition to the president (the head of the corporation) and the supervisors, the officials of the corporations are the vice president (several professors advising the president), who are to be approved by the council and others."
(B) "The vice presidents are to advice the president and do share some parts of the president's jobs. In order to help the president whose power and responsibility is enlarged in accordance with university's becoming a corporation, a vice president is to be allocated for each of important functions in the administration of a university (such as general affairs, academic research, education/students, finance, personnel, management of facilities, research information, environment and medicine, industrial relations, international relations)"
(C) "For each National University Corporation, this law establishes the members of the board of trustees, up to the number of members specified in column 4 of separate table 1, respectively, as officials."(Article 10, (2))
"The board of trustees assists the university president according to his instructions, presides over the functions of the National University Corporation, vicariously discharges the duties of the university president when he cannot do so himself, and performs the functions of the president when he is absent." (Article 11, (3))
What is to be noted here is that the concept of vice president in (A) and (B) is clear and intelligible while that of the board of trustees is so vague that it is hard to imagine what kind of position the trustee is. One might suspect that that position is only a nominal one whose real function is to serve as a paradise for retired bureaucrats of the central government. This suspicion is confirmed when we look at the maximum number of trustees assigned for each university in the separate table since the number varies from 2 to 8. If the trustee is to function as the vice president of university specified in (B), such numbers as 2 or 3 are too small for any realistic independent management of university. On the other hand, if the trustee's job is not that of vice president of this sort, the trustee has no actual function in the organization of university.
It is only one of many points with respect to which the Bill of National University Corporations mercilessly betrayed JANU's original expectations. For example JANU originally wanted the intermediary objectives to be established by each university, but BNUC stipulates them to be established by the Minister of the Education; JANU wanted the central government to be the establisher of each national university since this mean the government takes fiscal responsibility for the management of university, but the bill stipulates each national university corporation to be the establisher of the university; JANU wanted the employees of universities to keep the status of government employees which they enjoy now, but they are to lose that status under the new law. It cannot be said to pay any respect to the original objectives of the whole process of national university reform, namely better higher education and research in Japanese national universities. The simplest explanation of how the intentions of JANU could be ignored so relentlessly is that the bill of National University Corporations is not the product of debate over what the Japanese national universities should be like, but the product of political compromise between the Ministry of Education and other Ministries. That is why the bill does no good to Japanese national universities. It is just forced to them for the interests of bureaucrats.
Therefore, there is no reason for JANU to accept the bill and every reason for them to refuse it if they want their universities to be better at all. They have to speak out now. This is the last chance for them to keep their identity.