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Thu, 6 Feb 2003 (correction after sending out: Wed, 19 Feb. 03)

Kouichi Toyoshima

On Merging of universities

The most questionable point is that the plans are almost "guided" by the Ministry of Education without any cool investigation on the merits and demerits. In our case, the council of the university, the uppermost decision making body of the university, proposed to organize a committee to discuss the merging with the nearby medical college. I strongly insisted on fairly evaluating both the merits and demerits of the merging, but was ignored. The merging was supposed to be already decided somewhere else.

You must realize the fact that the bureaucratic system in the Japanese government is very strong because it is almost nvisible, namely it is beyond the accountability. The so-called "gyosei-shido" (administrative guidance) works with 120% efficiency in our country, and it is not an exception with the case on universities.

Actual effects of the university merging policy will be as follows;

1) Re-structuring of universities, namely the overall cutting down of the budgets for the universities resulting in the reduction of the size of the institution, in numbers of staffs (both academics and clerks).

2) Side-effect: In re-organizing process, the government have many opportunities to control universities. In principle, the important part of the process must be discussed by the Diet. But practically this process is always manipulated by the bureaucrats. For example, the limited term contract will be widely introduced under the cloak of this process, and the power of the president will be greatly increased. Both undermines the democracy in universities.

One important focus of this issue is the reduction of the faculties of pedagogy. In fact the merging involves abolishing of 3 or 4 pedagogical faculties. The faculty of pedagogy is the main supplier of teachers of elementary and junior high schools. Japan is notorious for the large size of classes of these schools. The government's policy is contrary to the improvements of the conditions of education.

Two or three regional organizations have been established to resist the abolition of faculties of pedagogy. I recommend you to visit the website* on Kochi University case, but I think it is in Japanese only.

* http://www.h5.dion.ne.jp/~fuzoku/