A Study On The Japanese Higher Education Reformation Policies Since The 1990's

After the World War II, Japan realized massification of higher education rapidly following the principle of equal access to education. However, the shortcomings of Japanese higher education institution such as rigidity, obturation, less competition were exposed as time went by. To solve those problems, the government started to seek ways for reformation at the end of the 1970's. The policies of reformation on high education, which characterizes marketization, have been formally implemented since the 1990's.Under the guidance of structural-functionalism theory, social conflict theory and institution innovation theory in sociology of education, a deep study on policies of Japanese higher education reformation since the 1990's has been made by this dissertation. Beginning with analyzing the background of the reform and tracing back to the evolution of Japan's education reformation policies, it makes a close examination on the three major policy issues, individuation of high education, flexibility of management, and tendency of education and scientific research reaching a higher level, and then the market mechanism used and incarnated in Japan's high education reformation policies are inspected and analyzed, the representative characteristics of Japan's policies are generalized. Using Japanese experiences for reference and combing the status quo of Chinese higher education reformation, the dissertation is ended by suggestions on Chinese education policy.