REFORM OF JAPANESE HIGHER EDUCATION
founded at the beginning of the 19th century are now being confronted with an era
of deep-rooted reform and change” (Amano 1999, p. ii). Yonezawa (2000) explains
the institutional response and governance impact of the process of these “limited
privatization” reforms of the national university system: 1) initial objection to, but
final acceptance of the process, 2) mergers of two or more public universities, 3) a
new Quality Assessment system (à la QAA in England and Wales), and 4) a new
budgetary system with a lump-sum allocation of government funding.
All universities in Japan, however, are not merely standing by passively. Certain
four-year institutions appear to be challenging themselves to keep abreast of the
changing times. There are plenty of examples of university experimentation in
Japan. As with most reforms, changes start not with the traditional established part
of a system but rather at the periphery. The case of higher education in Japan is no
exception. Specifically, within an environment of both intensified competition
from a relaxation of regulations and a steady long-term decrease in the population
of 18-year-olds, newly established universities looking to add a fresh approach to
“the system” cannot survive and prosper without challenging the established
universities and offering a noticeable difference.
The university reforms now underway have as their impetus the revision of the
standards for university facilities as put forth in the 1991 report of the Daigaku
Shingikai (often translated as the “Ad Hoc University Council”). However Amano
claims that “the revision most aspired toward in this report was no less than an
innovation of education itself (Amano 1999, p. iii). He believes that, especially, the
liberalization of the content of the education curriculum has achieved a
considerable change in the makeup of the four-year university education. The
removal of the division between the “general” education (kyōyō) and “specialized”
(senmon) education courses has resulted in the disappearance of liberal arts and
“general” education curricula at many universities.
The question remains, however, to what degree such reforms have succeeded, or
will succeed, in changing the quality of a university education. Although he admits
that to assess the results at this stage may be premature, Amano questions whether
by international standards the quality of education that students are receiving has
actually improved. The relaxation in entrance examination competition due to the
decline in the population of 18-year-olds, the diversification in the selection
process of applicants, and a curriculum reform that has lowered the standards of
elementary and junior high school have all raised new issues about the content of
university education at universities. Furthermore, Amano feels that a university
attendance rate of 50 percent (approaching the level of Trow’s “universal”
attendance
1
combined with the development of the information age means that new
issues, such as the admission of adult learners and more involvement in the global
community, are forcing universities to confront very new and challenging issues.
The issues discussed in this section are only a very few of such reform problems
that challenge universities.
Amano warns that from the standpoint of both university practitioners and
education researchers, these problems are more than ever before issues of such a
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CHAPTER 2
new character that the heretofore accumulated experience, information, and
research are inadequate. In his book, Amano explains that with the recent
establishment of an official organization, researchers into higher education have
only just taken the first step to legitimize their findings. He doubts that among
researchers such as himself there is enough competence to theoretically, practically,
and accurately answer the new challenges. It is not only the universities that are
faced with a conundrum. Academics working on research into higher education are
finding that they have few answers.
Amano’s discussion of reform, as with many such discussions, is for the most
part a consideration of top-down approach, whether at the government or
institutional level. One important discourse that seems missing, to me anyway, is
examples of changes from the bottom up, “reconstructions” of university culture
that may result in reforming practice rather than simply reforming structure. Frost
and Teodorescu (2001, pp. 409–410) illuminate such an example of reform of
practice, an apparent change of teaching and university “culture” at a major
research university. Though initially a top-down initiative, the result was “cultural
change,” as they put it. “The discourse moved from initial macrolevel discussions
to a university-wide movement on a more micro scale, fostering a culture that not
only values research and teaching equivalently but that also values teaching and
learning equivalently” (Frost & Teodorescu 2001, p. 410). Though couched in the
management language of organizational theory rather than anthropology, Frost and
Teodorescu’s point is one that I attempt to explore ethnographically below, looking
at individual beliefs of teaching and “the institutional culture” of EUC.
The view of HE reform of many western observers (and western-looking
Japanese educators) is more critical, and less optimistic, than Amano’s. Most feel
as Doyon (2001), that the paradox of Japanese HE is the commonly held view that
students are subjected to an examination hell to enter university, but then the actual
university experience of “higher learning” is no more than a four-year leisure land.
Of the many popular explanations for this paradox, the two most recurrent
“excuses” are that university life is a reward for high school hell and that
university life is a break before the hell of working. There are more complex
explanations, however.
Brian McVeigh (2001, 2002b) offers an interpretation in which he argues that
HE in Japan is a “myth.” In a Parsonian sense, he (McVeigh 2002b) argues
forcefully that Japan’s exam-centered schooling socializes students to think that
studying means examination prep, classroom participation means teacher
inspection, test taking is a sort of multiple-choice “catechism,” academic study is
merely credentialism, and learning is nothing more than rote memorization. The
education and examination system in Japan encourages in students an apathy
toward learning and an overconformity that manifests itself in shyness in the
classroom. It is interesting to compare McVeigh’s description of Japanese HE with
very similar points that Nathan (2005) makes after her ethnographic study of
American university students, crossculturally weighing what may indeed be global
traits of HEIs and their students.
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