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PART Recent Trends and Developments in Government Policies in Education, Science and Culture

Since our society is progressively becoming information oriented, the training of experts to play a leading role in a highly information oriented society in the future has become a very important issue.

In upper secondary schools, courses related to information, such as "information technology" courses and "information processing" courses have been rapidly increasing in recent years.

Also, in universities, junior colleges, colleges of technology and special training schools (advanced courses), the number of courses specializing in information science, as well as the number of places for entrants to these courses, has been rapidly increasing, in response to the growing demand for high-level information engineers and researchers.

The Ministry's Headquarters for the Implementation of Educational Reform, which had conducted, as a part of its tasks, a study on the manpower demand in the coming years, published an interim report in June 1988, in which it was estimated that out of the total demand for information engineers in the year 2000, institutions of formal education would be required to train from 1.5 to 2.25 million persons by that time. The measures the Ministry takes in 1991 in the Night of proposals made in this interim report include: the creation and expansion of courses related to information science at national institutions; the establishment of the Nara Graduate University of Advanced Science and Technology. which will stress education and research related to information science and other advanced fields of science and technology; and the further enrichment of educational equipment for information processing at institutions of higher education.