Examination of the Governance Reform of National and Public Universities(<Urgent Special Issue> Educational Reform and the Reconstruction of Educational Practice under Amended Fundamental Law of Education)

The purpose of this report is to investigate the problem of reform and the practices of universities in Japan after the enforcement of the "revision" of the Fundamental Law of Education. Therefore, I use a perspective for analysis called the governance of the university. This is an expression which refers to activities inside and outside of the university and the relations between both, and encompasses more than the term "management". There are two problems. The first is to analyze the process and contents of formation of the university corporation. The other is to clarify the meaning of the Fundamental Law of Education (2006) in its relation to university reform. The national university corporation has been results of the emergence of reduction of the obligations of the government and expansion of discretion about the university budget. The government appropriated the past university budget for the purpose of specific policy, and has secured control of the national university corporation. As a result, the university governance by society is, in effect, intensifying the government's direct control of universities. The internal governance of the university shifted to the management of the top-down type. Thereby the authority of the faculty has been reduced and deprived. In 2006, the principle of the Fundamental Law of Education (1947) which has been an obstacle to university reform related to the financial distribution for evaluation removed by the revision. Because the contribution of the university to society is the aim, there is the danger of shutting down a route by which universities decide content and methods for their contributions to society through original channels and the administration's ability to create conditions which maintain that purpose. On the other hand, the governance of the organization of the public university corporation is more free than the national university corporation's. The university ideally can make a system with various rules related to its scale, field and the related social situation. That is why the Japan Association of Municipal and Prefectural Colleges and Universities accepted the highly arbitrariness of the public university corporation. However, actually it cannot be said that the organization of the public university corporation is made in consideration of the governance problem of the university. This is reflected by the low standards of administrative and financial ability of the local government. It is necessary to create a interaction for governance inside and outside the university. These are both important matters for system reform to open lines of communication between society and the university and to actively seek to correct the problems that have arose with the operation of the university corporation system. It is the matter that we should pursue as an original ideal method for university governance reform.