Home > Policy > White Paper, Notice, Announcement > White Paper > FY2003 White Paper on Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology >Part1 Chapter3 Section2.1

In Japan, the major national financial measures for higher education include budget measures for national universities, local allocation tax measures for public universities and subsidies for current expenditures of private institutions of higher education, as well as scholarship loans to students, grants-in-aid for scientific research for researchers and others.

The fiscal expenditures of national and local governments in Japan for higher education represent 0.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) (2003). Due to differences in the systems, it is not possible to make an exact comparison, but this figure is lower than those for the US and Europe.

In addition, looking at Japan's expenditure burden for higher education, compared to the US and Europe, the outstanding difference is that the percentage of fiscal expenditures is low, and the percentage occupied by student fees, including tuition fees and other fees borne by students, is high.

On the other hand, since in the US and Europe the percentages of general government total expenditures with respect to GDP are relatively high, the percentages occupied by fiscal expenditures are high. In addition, as the scholarship systems in the US and Europe are relatively well developed and there are a lot of private-sector funds other than student fees such as donations and managed fund income, it can be said that the expenses of higher education are born widely by society as a whole.