A Third Party Evaluation Policy and Legislating Process in Japanese Higher Education

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  • 日本における大学評価政策の形成と立法過程
  • ニホン ニ オケル ダイガク ヒョウカ セイサク ノ ケイセイ ト リッポウ カテイ

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Abstract

A government bill introducing third party evaluations of Japanese universities was enacted by the Diet in November 2002. According to the new law, all universities and colleges, national and public, and even private, have the obligation to undergo third party evaluations as well as self-studies by assessment or accreditation agents, which must be recognized by the Minister of Education and Science. The reasons why the third party evaluation was proposed include: widespread mistrust in the quality of self study and disappointments in the effectiveness to self-reform by individual institutions, the government's intention to make the evaluation more useful for the purpose of resource allocation, and the deregulation policy that emphasizes a shift from a pre-checking to a more post-assessment system. However, more fundamentally, it was based on the demands from the government, industry, and political world that universities should become more efficient and dynamic social institutions, as integrated entities of research (=creation of knowledge), teaching (=transmission of knowledge), and service (=application of knowledge), in order to introduce competition and market mechanisms. Even the Central Council for Education, an advisory body to the Minister of Education, which is expected to reflect the opinion of the educational community, also expressed the same standpoint, faithfully reflecting these outside opinions. It must be a Japanese characteristic that most of the individual universities and higher education associations have few clear statements regarding the quality assurance problem, despite the fact that this should be the prime responsibility of universities themselves. There are serious questions regarding how to tackle this challenge for higher education circles, which have been comparatively underdeveloped in theory and methods of evaluation.

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