Corporatization of National Universities in Japan: Revolution for Governance or Rhetoric for Downsizing?

As in a number of other countries, Japanese higher education institutions have faced pressure to reduce costs and respond to 'market pressures'. This has included proposals by the national government to introduce competition, 'agencify' or corporatize universities and give management autonomy for universities in a hope that this will improve efficiency. The proposals, however, are considered not a linear development but a radical change, because they go beyond an organizational reform as agencification that has been already adopted into some public services in 2001. Consequently, this paper analyses why this new policy change has suddenly happened and examines whether the new framework will be able to improve performance through enhancing autonomy. Investigating the process, we show that the corporatization of national universities has been progressed as the rhetoric for enhancing university autonomy and excellence, while the reality has shifted into a public sector reform as downsizing under the fiscal stress and the government control on performance might be much stronger.

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