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PART Issues and Perspectives ofHigher Education

With the remarkable spread of upper secondary and higher education as a background, various problems regarding formal education today have been exposed, such as the excessive competition in entrance examinations and undue emphasis placed on the deviation value of students' scores on standardized achievement tests. In order to help upper secondary schools cope with a changing society and the diverse qualities of students, the Ministry of Education. Science and Culture has been striving to make the aims of the revised Course of Study fully understood by all upper secondary school teachers and to make a relevant reexamination of the existing structure of upper secondary education, so as to make the structure more diversified and more flexible. With a view to facilitating such changes, and with a view to ensuring better articulation between upper secondary and higher education as related to reforms in upper secondary education, it will be one of the most important tasks for the Ministry to improve the existing procedures for selecting university entrants with the air of diversifying the content and methods of the selection procedures.

As mentioned above (Section 3 of Chapter 2 of Part I), in order to mitigate excessive competition in entrance examinations, it is crucial to make constant efforts in diverse aspects, including the improvement of procedures for selecting university entrants, the development of unique and diversified programs at each institution, and the correction of the social climate in which undue emphasis is placed on the educational backgrounds of individuals and too much value is attached to a small number of prestigious institutions. Various reform efforts are now being made by individual universities and by voluntary associations of university people. Urgent important policy issues are promoting the development of unique and diverse methods of selection by individual universities, and giving students the opportunity to apply to two or more public (national or local) universities.

The first issue concerns the content and methods of selecting university entrants. Regarding this issue, individual universities, both public and private, need to strive to develop unique and diverse methods of selecting entrants, so that they may assess diverse aspects of the students' abilities, avoiding excessive emphasis on their scholastic abilities which are evaluated by means of scholastic achievement tests. To this end, it is crucial for each university to continue its reform attempts regarding selection procedures, so that it may make an overall and careful assessment of the students' diverse abilities and aptitudes on the basis of various data, including the report submitted by the principal of each upper secondary school and the results of the scholastic aptitude tests, interviews, essay tests and practical skills tests given by each university. It is also important to help individual universities adopt more diverse methods of selection through admitting a number of students on the basis of the recommendations of school principals and through introducing a number of special places for adult citizens, as well as for students who are returnees from a long stay abroad.

In order to contribute positively to these reform efforts on the part of public and private universities, and NCUEE (National Center for University Entrance Examination) Examination was introduced in 1990 to be used for the selection of university entrants for April 1990. The kinds and number of test subjects to be required of applicants are to be determined by each university with its own judgment and creativity. It is hoped that the NCUEE Examination will be successfully administered and will firmly take root so that individual universities may develop unique and diverse methods of selection by combining the results of this nation-wide examination with those of their own examinations in an appropriate way. It is also hoped that private universities will make proper use of the NCUEE Examination with their own creative ideas.

The next issue is about providing students with opportunities to apply to two or more public universities. At present, the schedule for university entrance examinations is of two patterns: the consecutive pattern and the separation and dividing pattern. Under the former pattern, each university chooses either Period A or Period B, and gives its entrance examination once in the period chosen. Under the latter pattern, each university divides the total places for first-year students in to two groups, and gives separate entrance examinations (in two periods) to the two groups.

In the future, it will be crucial for the Ministry to help simplify the schedule of entrance examinations and encourage more universities to adopt the separation and dividing pattern so as to facilitate the provision of students with more choices of universities to apply to, as well as the introduction of diverse selection methods by individual universities.

The selection of university entrants may inevitably involve some competition among applicants so as to contribute to the vitalization of both the university and society at large. It can be considered, however, that the efforts of individual institutions for developing diverse selection procedures in accordance with their own individuality and special characteristics would contribute to the development of diverse and unique activities in education and research at individual institutions of higher education.

In this connection, it should be added that the University Council is now considering, in medium- and long-term perspectives, the basic principles and basic direction for the improvement of university entrance examinations, and that the Central Council for Education is considering the issue of articulation between upper secondary and higher education, with a view to improving the present state of affairs.