Opinion & Perspective
Struggles for Autonomy in Japanese Higher
Education
Tim Stewart
Kyoto University

This article examines three areas of reform in Japanese higher
education currently underway that purport to deliver autonomy
in different ways. Realeal reform necessarily entailss improving an
unsatisfactory situation,, so I use reform here to mean more than simply“amend.”Since former Prime Minister Nakasone’s government formed the
Ad Hoc Council on Educational Reform (Rinji Kyoiku Shingikai) in the
1980s, higher education reforms have accelerated in Japan. Following
the Ad Hoc Council’s recommendation, the Ministry of Education
established the University Council (Daigaku Shingikai) in 1986. The
University Council (UC) is an advisory group of experts including
representatives from labor and industry. The UC has promoted policies
designed to liberalize higher education in Japan and published atleast 25 reports between 1987 and 2000 (Tsuruta, 2003). All of thisactivity is very impressive;; however, the fundamental philosophicaltenets supporting expansionist centralized bureaucratic control rarely
are questioned by authorities. This could handicap efforts to achievemuch needed reforms in Japanese higher education.
My focus in this article is on three reform trends that are being
currently invoked as indicators of increased autonomy in Japanese228

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higher education: reform of the national universities (kyoiku kaikaku),
faculty development (FD), and learner autonomy. I examine thesethrough the prism of my own experience teaching at a Japanese national
university, as well as serving on a number of committees there. I helda tenured post at that institution for four years and have since left.
My perspective is admittedly subjective and highly selective, but it isinformed. I explore each of the three reform currents through reflection
on the relevant literature in tandem with autobiographical descriptionsof my own experience with them.

Reform of the national universities
In the deliberations to ratify the National University Corporations
Law, Ministry of Education officials claimed that the national universities
were being reformed in order to increase their autonomy (seesee Bachnik,
2005, p. 284).
).. This would seem to indicate that the government views
the public universities’ dependent relationship on the ministry as adefect in the system. McVeigh is of the opinion, however, that “tacit
in much of the discourse about reform is an understanding that any
change should be authorized… by the Ministry” (2005, p. 78). Thisobservation could be used to legitimate the claim of many observers
that: “The reforms are likely to make universities, especially middleranking ones, more dependent than independent” (Cyranoski, 2002,
p. 876), and will likely threaten the existence of smaller institutions inremote areas (Jannuzi, 2008).
The National University Corporations Law gave public university
presidents increased authority, thus establishing more of a corporatestyle of management with an increased concentration of powerat the top. Some observers fear that the reforms could result increating institutions that are “little better than ‘education-ministryrun universities’” (Tabata, 2005, p. 97). As a possible foreshadowingof this, in January 2008 the Ministry of Education announced plansto set “minimum knowledge and techniques requirements” for all
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undergraduate programs (“Education ministry to create university
guidelines,” 2008).
But perhaps this is an overblown concern. As Tabata (2005) notes,“it is not unrealistic to assume that actual conditions relating touniversity administration will remain much the same. In fact, manymembers of universities feel that no drastic changes will occur” (p.
101). Hatakenaka (2005) expands on this point:
Today’s process of incorporation … may turn out to create little
more than structures which will continue to constrain university
actions. There may be large numbers of changes in names andappearances but the fundamental relationships may not changemuch. (p. 71)
Thus, it remains to be seen what the new status of the former
public universities as “independent administrative corporations” will
mean on a pragmatic level. According to the legislation, the Ministryof Education is in charge of organizing the planning and evaluationof universities, leaving the actual implementation of plans up to the
newly “independent” public schools. With the state stipulating thegoals of the evaluation and actually responsible for the evaluation,
fears of this being a Trojan horse aimed at increased central control
do not seem unwarranted. After all, the guarantee of professional
educational autonomy granted in the Fundamental Law of Education
has been constantly eroded by Japanese officials (Horio, 1988, pp.
162-167).
)..
I have heard faculty speculate that the plan is merely an effort tosave money and give academia in Japan a sharper commercial focus.
According to Nobel laureate Ryoji Noyori, the reform plan “should aim
for energizing researchers and educators, not producing some financial
result” (Cyranoski, 2002, p. 875). This speaks to concernss raised bymy colleagues that the reforms will simply lower all boats (i.e., cut
230

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benefits for Japanese and non-Japanese faculty alike) through costsaving measures such as limited-term contracts for faculty members
and staff, thus creating a kind of professional class of academic freeters(aa term used in Japan to describe underemployed young adults).
The current reform process seems paradoxical. One of the espoused
aims of the reform policy is to improve the quality of Japanese higher
education by creating distinctive, world-class academic institutions..
However,owever, the origin of the current reform process was the campaign
to cut public sector personnel costs. In order to reach the goal for a
25% reduction to the civil service workforce between 2001 and 2010,
the government included the national universities in the calculation(Hatakenaka, 2005; Jannuzi, 2008). Former Prime Minister Koizumi
pushed ahead and incorporated the public universities. This sleightof hand instantly helped the government cut the civil service rolls.
With the focus firmly on the bottom line, public university presidents
now have the authority to trim expenses by consolidating and cutting
personnel. But for Japanese universities to gain the ability to competeinternationally, a key objective of the reforms, the national government
will need to spend much more of its gross national income on higher
education (Murasawa, 2002), that is unless the government opts topass that burden onto students through large increases in tuition fees..
Indeed, this
his is the future according to Jannuzi: “Reduced annual bloc
grants to the former national and public universities will most likely
lead to a rise in fees closer to the level of private ones - from around[US]$4,500 now to [US]$7,500 in the next five years.”
Changes are taking place (see Eades, Goodman, & Hada, 2005),
but the rationale for the reforms appears muddled and the outlook
for greater autonomy at the national universities is uncertain. For thereforms to succeed on an educational level, workable procedures areneeded to evaluate and improve research and teaching,, and thishis brings
me to my next point..

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Faculty development (FD)To promote the goal of improving the quality of university educationin Japan, the government’s University Council (UC) spotlighted threeareas for attention:: reinforcement of teaching, promotion of researchand teaching of an international standard, and responding to thedevelopment of a lifelong learning society (Tsuruta, 2003). One of
the stated objectives for the reinforcement of the teaching function israising the standard of the faculty’s teaching ability and morale throughthe introduction of faculty
aculty development
evelopment (FD).
FD).
).. As a result, “FD focusing
on improvement of the teaching ability and skill of faculty members
has been institutionalised as a kind of obligation in every institution
by the UC's recommendation” (Arimoto, 2001, p. 9). This reaction by
university administrators begs the question:: for whose benefit is FD
being promoted in Japanese tertiary institutions?
The vast majority of faculty opposed the decision to transform thenational universities into Semi-independent Administrative Agencies(Jannuzi, 2008). A likely result of this will be tepid faculty support
for implementation of reforms. This tenuous commitment to change,
coupled with the sudden obligatory implementation of FD programson university campuses, suggests weak faculty support for innovations.
Since reliability and trust are the main determinants of the effectivenessof university governance, faculty inclusion in governance processes
is essential. In the absence of clearly laid out, mutually agreed-upon
-upon
upon
goals, the stakeholders in the process may very well be working at
cross-purposes.
My experience with faculty development extends nearly 20 years.
I served on an FD committee at my previous institution, a national
university, for two years. What I experienced was reluctant committee
members kept busy observing resistant colleagues and video taping
lessons. At the departmental level, tapes were given fast forward
reviews by colleagues who hastily filled out and submitted evaluation
forms. Committee members compiled reports each term and all of232

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this information was sent to the committee chair. To me at the time,
this activity seemed earnest and it required a good deal of time, effort
and care. One year after I had vacated my seat on the FD committee
though, I began receiving disturbing messages from the colleague who
replaced me. She asked if I knew who in our department had been
observed, when, and what kind of observation (video tape or in class)they had opted for. She later asked if I had copies of the evaluations on
file. In short, all of the work we had done for two years was lost. It had
not counted for anything. This disturbing perception was reinforcedby the fact that after the frenzy of the first two years when FD was invogue, the buzz about FD in our general and departmental faculty
meetings completely died.
There is rarely talk amongst faculty about what it is they do in theclassroom, and about why or how they would like to improve or change
their pedagogy (Bok, 2006). This is unfortunate for many reasons, oneof which is that it creates a vacuum wherein faculty members abandon
their central responsibility, thus allowing administrators to move in andtake control. The newly implemented student evaluations at Japanesepublic universities present this kind of opening. To date,, at my former
campus, evaluation results are largely ignored by administrators, faculty
and students. But complacency amongst professors might not be wise
for maintaining their autonomy in the classroom over the long term.
A serious effort at improving teaching would obviously mine thesedata sources systematically in order to give professors meaningful
guidance. Colleagues need to work together and help one another.
Simply put, there is very little practical FD support for faculty members
who need or seek mentoring (Cowie, 2002). This situation mirrors thelack of Information Technology services provided at many Japanese
universities (see Bachnik, 2005, p. 283). For FD to be meaningful, it
has to promote teacher autonomy.

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Learner autonomy
Another term linked to reform heard in Japanese academia today
is learner autonomy. Clearly, autonomy is a motherhood issue. But
can its broad and seldom challenged appeal actually weaken sincere
implementation efforts? Concern has been raised recently that thetheoretical underpinnings of learner and teacher autonomy might nothold and will give way to yet another pedagogical innovation (Little,
2007, p. 1). In the same vein, Nakata (2007,, p. 11)) paraphrases Dewey(1938) to implore that: “Learner autonomy must be a reality, not aname or slogan.”.””
During work on a government-funded research project that I
was asked to join and that focused on promoting learner autonomy,
I became frustrated because it was unclear how ‘learner autonomy’
would ultimately be fostered in the university. My fear was that myformer university would adopt a prescriptionist ideology of teacher
control in deciding what is good for learners to guide autonomous
learning pedagogy. A nagging difficulty with this orientation is thatwhile students (the Other) may be seen as problematic, the teacher (Self)
is viewed neutrally or as unproblematic (Holliday, 2003). Teachers’
habits, perceptions, goals and methods need to be reflected uponand challenged in constructive ways. My frustration grew as I sensed
that colleagues at my former institution had no intention to explore
their teaching practice in order to grow themselves as autonomous
learners.
When the final reports were written and the presentations were madeat the end of the project, most of the findings and recommendations
favored technical elements to make students in the General English
courses more “autonomous.” To me, repackaging data collection
procedures via computerized testing systems should not be labeled as aprocess to promote learner autonomy. This leads at best to an uninspired
program for promoting autonomous learning. But this outcome was234

Struggles for Autonomy... OnCUE Journal, 2(3), pages 228-240

understandable since it pleased top-ranking administrators.
My experience has revealed that even though the term learnerautonomy is being flaunted in Japanese higher education, the focus on
students can be overwhelmed by a search for quick technological fixes
with the lowest labor demands. There seems to be money available
for more machines and software, but not for teachers. I stressed to
my colleagues on the research project that human relations are at
the core of successful autonomy promotion. Classroom interaction
is vital because: “Whether or not students will show autonomous
behaviour to their teachers is of course their decision, which is in
itself a matter of personal autonomy” (Holliday, 2005, p. 87). What
this means is that for the success of programs intent on fostering
autonomous learning, the professional pedagogical development of
individual teachers should focus on trying to close the gap between
student and teacher perceptions of learning. If teacher and learnerautonomy are interdependent, and teacher autonomy is “control over
one’s own professional development” (McGrath, 2000, p. 100), thento open the necessary space for students to exercise their autonomy,
the teacher needs to recognize and assert her own autonomy (Breen& Mann, 1997). Just as the situation described above regarding faculty
development (FD) shows, there appears to be little concern aboutproviding sustained faculty support to enable the development ofteaching practices to foster learner autonomy.
Holliday stresses the central role of this kind of support: “It is
possible for educators to be learner-centred,
rner-centred,
ner-centred, in the same way as it
is possible for men to be feminist; but this requires a particularly
difficult depth of reconceptualization which cannot be captured intechnicalized methodological procedures” (2005, p. 80). The creationof an educational environment that fosters learner, and teacher,autonomy in the more significant, deeper, and lifelong learning senseof the term, will likely entail, over a long period of development,
the eventual creation of a learning culture of risk taking, experience235

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sharing, experimentation and an openness to change amongst faculty
and students. Clearly an innovation like this must have the full supportof administrators. Most importantly, teaching has to be publicly valued
in the same ways that research is (see Stewart, 2004, 2006). This meansthat the intersection where teacher autonomy meets learner autonomy
can be political in nature. The concept of autonomous learning
demands significant changes that might be resisted by vested interests
supporting hitherto ‘standard procedures.’More autonomy or more control?
There is a potential for more student-centered approaches toemerge, but the government’s grip on education policy appears to betightening (“Education ministry to create university guidelines,” 2008).
Demographic trends are forcing schools to lower entrance standards
and take in a much broader spectrum of students. This might encouragesome teachers to consider exploring their practice. The fear of losing
students, and subsequently teaching posts, could possibly shift theperennial focus on research toward more of a concern with effective
teaching. A major obstacle to this change is the fact that teaching is
not valued in faculty appointments and promotions. Currently for mostappointments, teaching skill is never considered. Promotion, in thehumanities and social sciences, is simply a numbers game in which
the only considerations appear to be likeability, age and number ofpublications. Even the quality of publications matters little for themost part (Eades, 2005). The lack of genuine processes for tenure andpromotion remains highly problematic.
Faculty at the former national universities in Japan are now required
to do self-evaluations of their performance in the areas of teaching,scholarship, administrative work and community service. Yet, just as
with FD and pedagogy promoting learner autonomy, there is very little
support for professional development. As a result, professors might
try to cover up problems out of fear and shame. What seems to be
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happening to the many new sets of evaluations now required at public
institutions is that they are naturally absorbed into the elaborate systemof status-based evaluation in Japan that loves to rank schools (Bachnik,2005). Because all individual evaluations are tabulated into facultyand university-wide statistics necessary for getting funding from theministry, the individual becomes lost in the process,, with the realchange being a strengthening of the relationship between the ministry
and the universities.
The underlying obstacle to real reform is conceptual. The
centralized education bureaucracy in Japan frames education as anadministrative function rather than as an academic enterprise (seeBachnik, 2005; Horio, 1988; McVeigh, 2005, 2006). Bachnik argues
that the organizational structure of Japanese higher education mustchange in ways that “require a shift from a focus on education that is
administrative, bureaucratic and teacher-centred; to one that is studentcentred and focuses on the education process of the students” (p. 279).
Therefore, until the notion of ‘education’ undergoes radical reframing,
the gap between reform plans and practice will make substantialchange difficult to implement. Japanese university administrators haveto stop being forced to fix their appreciative gazes upward at Tokyobased bureaucrats in order to maintain their funding and status, andmust be allowed to look inward at students and faculty members on
their campuses, as well as out toward their local communities; that is,more local autonomy and less central control.
Tim Stewart has held full time positions at public and private universities
in Japan since 1994. During that time Tim has worked on various
professional and curriculum development projects whilst serving on
numerous faculty hiring, assessment, and FD (faculty development)
committees.

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