Research On National University Corporation Evaluation In Japan

In April2004, corporate reform of national universities was officially launched in Japan. As one of the core parts of the corporate reform, National University Corporation Evaluation (NUCE) has become a research hotspot. Through a careful study of the NUCE, this research aims to identify its characteristics and problems as well as its influence on forming a new relationship between the Ministry of Education and national universities. Consequently, a better understanding to university evaluation can be achieved, serving as a guide to the construction and improvement of the evaluation system in China.The following steps are followed in this research:(1) literature study;(2) a detailed study about the background, agencies, contents and methods of the NUCE is taken and it is centered on two questions, namely "how are the performances of national university corporations against their annual plans and mid-term objectives evaluated by the NUCE" and "Is the implementation of NUCE beneficial to the reform of each university";(3) characteristics and problems of the NUCE are identified;(4) some suggestions and implications for the improvement of the evaluation system in China are given.The NUCE possesses following characteristics:(1) relatively new and is constantly being improved;(2) a comprehensive structure including almost all kinds of evaluation methods and styles;(3) focuses on "peer assessment" and respects the features of university;(4) a medium of the new management mode between the government and national universities;(5) emphasis on social responsibility. However, there are also some problems that emerge during the implementation of the NUCE, including unclear evaluation indicators, relatively heavy burden of the evaluation, insufficient usage of the evaluation results, a lack of professional evaluators, an inadequate training system for the evaluators and so on.The NUCE is important to both Japanese government and national university corporations. Through the NUCE, Japanese government aims to impose supervisions and indirect regulations on national universities while national universities proves their existential value to the public and the society by fulfilling the obligation to inform and deepen their reform by diagnosing the problems. Meanwhile, the results of the corporate reform are also tested during the process. The NUCE in Japan can serve as a guide to the construction of the university evaluation system in our country. At the macro level, it is suggested that (1) missions and objectives of evaluation be clarified in external and internal of the universities, and a good evaluation atmosphere be created;(2) university evaluation be viewed from an international perspective. In practical aspects, it is proposed as follows: firstly, third-party evaluation institutions be designated to guarantee the fairness of evaluation; secondly, experts on higher education evaluation be included in the evaluation team to improve the professionality of the evaluation; thirdly, the key points of the evaluation be adjusted according to university types while guidance for different types of universities be given; fourthly, intra-university research be stressed on to improve universities’awareness of self-appraisal; finally, the government earnestly perform its service function to create an excellent evaluation environment.