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PART Issues and Perspectives ofHigher Education

The promotion of distinctive and diversified programs at individual institutions of higher education would require the government to reexamine existing Standards for the Establishment of Universities. Standards for the Establishment of Junior Colleges and other national standard regulations, which lay down the national framework of the higher education system in Japan. These existing national standards for institutions of higher education can be appraised as having played a certain role in maintaining and improving the level of educational and research programs at universities, junior colleges and other institutions of higher education.

However, now that Japan is in a position to join the other advanced countries in creating a new world. Japanese institutions of higher education should strive to develop their educational and research activities in diverse ways making various innovative attempts relevant to the coming age of uncertainty. In order to facilitate such efforts by individual institutions, it can be regarded as desirable to make as flexible as possible the provisions of the national standards setting forth a framework for the activities of institutions.

In addition, in order to enable each university or each junior college to attempt creative innovations with its own judgment, it will be essential to make more flexible and more general the provisions of the Standards for the Establishment of Universities and other standard regulations laying down the institutional framework for institutions of higher education. The University Council is now deliberating this aspect with a view to securing more flexible and more general standard regulations.

In connection with making the Standards for the Establishment of Universities more general, it can be regarded as an important task for individual universities to improve the content of general and specialized education, as well as the relationship between the two categories of education, as part of their efforts for developing enriched, unique and diverse programs in education and research on the basis of their own educational principles.

General education aims to have students acquire a broad knowledge through academic learning, so that they may acquire more than mere specialized knowledge. It is also aimed at helping students develop the ability of independent and comprehensive thinking, as well as a critical eye. The achievement of these aims is very important in the light of the present characteristics of contemporary students entering universities, and in the light of the development of various disciplines.

While individual universities are making various innovative efforts towards the realization of these aims of general education, very often classroom instruction in general education subjects at universities falls short of the original aims of general education, and tends to lack its systematic relation with specialized education.

Each university is required to ensure the improvement of its curricula and its structure of educational programs, so that it may substantially and effectively realize the above aims of general education and at the same time cope with the following trends: the progress of research in various fields; the development of interdisciplinary research activities; the modernization of the curriculum adapted to the diversification and sophistication of different segments of society; the maintenance of an internationally high level of educational programs; and the extension of the scope of each major field of study.