The Future of Higher Education

The financial circumstances of Japan\u27s private universities are worsening yearly as the universities face the problem of not having enough students to fill places. In 1992, the 18-year-old population peaked at 2.05 million and then rapidly began to decline. In 2004, there were 1.40 million 18-year-olds. However, the number of universities has continued to rise meaning that around one in four private universities were in the red in fiscal 2003. Some universities will soon find that thay are no longer viable.State attempts at quality improvement over the past ten years, such as encouraging university self-evaluation and self-assessment, have proved unsuccessful, leaving Japanese higher education in apparent disarray. Yet despite this confusion, by 2004 almost fifty percent of high school graduates had continued on either to university or junior college.To counter this disarray, three important reforms were implemented in the Japanese higher education system in 2004, in step with globalization. The first reform means that national universities have become independent corporations and have been integrated to reduce their numbers from 99 to 87. The second reform is the enforcement of accreditation for private institutions to rank the universities according to quality. In Japan, this system of accreditation has taken many years to implement even though the United States has a long history of university evaluation. The third reform is the revision of the Private School Law with provision for reforms in information disclosure, management systems and the like.In Japan in 2005, there are approximately 700 universities, 80 percent of which are private. This paper first discusses the problems of university consolidation and crisis management as shown in the report produced by the Japan Private University Federation and the Japan Association of Certified Public Accountants. It then goes on to discuss the future of Japanese universities referring to the report entitled, The Grand Design of Japanese Higher Education in the Future written by the Central Council for Education