On The Corporation Reform Of Japanese National Universities

On April 1st, 2004, 89 Japanese national universities undertook the reform of the independent administrative corporation, thus shrinking the government's administrative interference in and control of the internal affairs of national universities. This reform is known as"earthquake"reform in the Japanese educational circle.Influenced by the globalization of knowledge and economy, the Japanese government implemented the corporation of national universities so as to get rid of domestic economic depression. This was part of the reform of the administrative system and met the needs of universities which had hoped to be free from the"protection and control"of the Educational Committee to get more autonomy and the correspondent legal status.The reform of the independent administrative corporation of Japanese national universities was legally made. As"The Law of Independent Administrative Corporation"and"The National University Law"prescribe, all the national universities'legal status is corporate bodies. The contents of the reform were as follows: establishing university cooperators to conduct autonomous management; adopting the folk idea of marketing; introducing people outside universities to build up the new operation system; establishing the new personnel system different from civil servant system and employing"the third-party evaluation system"to carry out a"post-check system"etc.From the perspective of the corporation of Japanese national universities and based on the knowledge of the general situation of Japanese national universities, this article analyzes the background and the content of the corporation reform with emphasis on the policy basis of the corporation reform and the first three-year effects after the implementation of the corporation reform. Besides, it gives a brief philosophical analysis of the argument triggered by the corporation reform.Despite the great differences in social systems and national situation, China and Japan, which are neighboring countries, share many similarities in education. Therefore, it is significant to study the corporation reform of Japanese national universities. It is suggested by the writer that to solve the problem our national universities are faced with, we can use the corporation reform of Japanese national universities for reference and revelation to perfect the corporation system of our national universities.