Home > Policy > White Paper, Notice, Announcement > White Paper > JAPAMESE GOVERNMENT POLICIES IN EDUCATION,SCIENCE AND CULTURE 1990 > PART Chapter4 2 5

PART Issues and Perspectives ofHigher Education

The Federal Government has no power to interfere directly with the administration or management of individual institutions of higher education.

While the power of the State governments regarding State universities and colleges varies among the several States, the State government can, as a matter of fact, interfere with the administration of State institutions through budget appropriations to these institutions. Legally universities and colleges can be founded with the approval of the State government. However, they can function publicly only if they are accredited by college accreditation associations, which are organized by colleges for each region and for each major field of study with the aim of assessing and accrediting colleges in accordance with their own accreditation standards.

As a whole, the administration and management of institutions of higher education are the responsibility of individual institutions. Consequently, each institution has been endeavoring to stabilize its own management by keeping a high standard of educational and research programs and by securing a favorable evaluation of these programs. Various rankings of colleges have been made public by various organs providing college evaluation of each field of specialty. In this way, there exists a traditional climate where colleges are subject to a constant evaluation of their structures and programs.

In the middle of the 1980's the Federal Government began to show their interesting the evaluation of institutions of higher education. As a means for helping improve the quality of college programs, the Federal Government requested State governments to make clear publicly the accountability of college programs by means, for example, of publishing the results of the evaluation of outputs of college graduates (i.e.. the evaluation of what, and to what extent, students have acquired during their college years). As college tuition and fees have been increasing during recent years, one of the important issues to be dealt with by college authorities is how to control an increase in these fees with a view to ensuring equal opportunity for higher education. According to a survey conducted by the Federal Government, in 1986 the average yearly amount of tuition and other fees per student for four-year colleges was $1,248 (approximately 220,000 yen) for State institutions and $6,171 (1,110,000yen) for private institutions.