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Strategic planning of the graduate and undergraduate education in a research university in Japan
Higher Education Policy 15 (2002) 55 – 60 www.elsevier.com/locate/highedpol
Strategic planning of the graduate and undergraduate education in a research university in Japan Masaaki Ogasawara ∗ Center for Research and Development in Higher Education, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0817, Japan
Abstract As a consequence of the toning down of the University Standards in 1991, many universities in Japan changed their institutional arrangements for undergraduate education. Generally speaking, new curricula put emphasis on specialty programs in each department resulting in relatively weaker general education programs. However, Hokkaido University decided to keep and strengthen the general education programs, which were continuously articulated to each of the specialty programs. The arrangements are a possible model for research universities in Japan of the next generation. In this arrangement the common core curriculum, the essential part of the undergraduate education, is supported by an interdisciplinary education system. The system is “a university in the university” in the sense that it o4ers a consistent program made of essence of each specialized 6eld abstracted and reorganized for non-specialized students. In contrast, the graduate programs for each department should be more 7exible so that they 6t the competitive environment in the changing research world. The model is discussed on the basis of the proc 2002 posals by a task force for strategic planning of Hokkaido University in 21st century. International Association of Universities. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Japan’s higher education has reached the universal stage according to criteria proposed by Martin Trow (Problems in Transition from Elite to Mass Higher Education, Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, Berkeley, CA, 1973). Nearly, 50% of young people enroll in higher education institutes (HEI) including four-year universities and two-year junior colleges with another 21% in various vocational institutions ∗
Fax: +81-011-706-7521.
c 2002 International Association of Universities. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. 0952-8733/02/$22.00 All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 5 2 - 8 7 3 3 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 3 5 - 6
56
M. Ogasawara / Higher Education Policy 15 (2002) 55 – 60
in the year 2000 (University Council, 2000). With the change of the participation rate, students’ attitudes are also changing quickly. The well-known elitism among students has already disappeared even in major research universities. Instead, students have started to think about the quality of education in conjunction with the amount of money they or their parents spend. This is quite a new experience for higher education in Japan. Obviously, the free-market ideology is going to be predominate not only in the private sector but also in the public sector of higher education in Japan. 2. Problems on general education Despite these dramatic changes in students’ attitudes, the response of universities, especially that of established national universities, was slow. Faculty meetings, the main decision-making machine in the university, devoted much time to obtaining consensus among academic sta4. Teachers have paid much more attention to their own research projects than to their teaching obligations. They used to stick to the archaic view that students were more or less mature learners with basic skills and were able to 6nd their own academic interests without the explicit guidance of teachers. Because of this attitude, professors in major research universities were not necessarily keen to improve their teaching strategy and teaching skills for a long time. Besides this, too much specialization, especially in the 6elds of humanities, natural sciences, and technologies, made it diHcult for students to understand the relevance of undergraduate education to their own interests and future jobs. Such a feeling of discontent among students emerges most frequently in classes of general education. Responding to the growing social dissatisfaction, the University Council encouraged the universities in their reports in 1998 to promote reform of liberal or general education in undergraduate programs (University Council, 1998). Similar problems may be easily seen in other countries, but those of general education in Japan have somewhat more complicated roots. After World War II, higher education in Japan changed drastically. All the “Imperial” universities, including Hokkaido Imperial University, were abolished (Clark & Neave, 1992). Various professional colleges, high schools, and normal schools were integrated, and as many as 69 “democratic” national universities were established in 1949 according to the principle of “one university for one prefecture”. The undergraduate program of the newly established universities was divided into two periods: the initial two-year period was devoted to general education and the latter two-year period to specialized education in each department. Newly established schools of general education were in charge of the programs for freshmen and sophomores. Although a di4erent philosophy was needed to run the new educational institutions, academic people were too busy to cope with the new circumstances and simply considered the general education program as a slightly modi6ed version of the former high school program in prewar times; i.e. a preparatory program that mainly consisted of liberal arts and sciences for the advanced, specialized courses in each school in universities. In short, the former three-year high school program was shortened to a two-year general education program and the former three-year university program was shortened to a two-year specialized university program.
M. Ogasawara / Higher Education Policy 15 (2002) 55 – 60
57
The general education curriculum was strictly assigned by the University Standards and the Junior College Standards, and kept intact for as long as 40 years. During those years, universities in Japan evolved from the elite stage to the mass. The faculty of general education su4ered because they had too many students to teach, poor facilities, and discrimination against them in the sense that they were less well funded and had a much greater teaching obligation than the specialized schools. As a consequence of the toning down of the University Standards and the Junior College Standards in 1991, many universities changed their institutional arrangements for undergraduate education. Among national universities, only the University of Tokyo and Tokyo Medical and Dental University retained the schools for general education without any institutional change. In other universities, like Kyoto, newly established institutes such as Faculty of Integrated Science or Faculty of Integrated Humanistic Science took charge of general education. Most universities chose a four-year integrated undergraduate education program and dissolved the faculty for general education. Many created interinstitutional education systems for general education, mostly organized by committee members from each school. The real meaning of “reform” is thus di4erent from university to university. Generally speaking, new curricula put emphasis on specialty programs in each department resulting in relatively weaker general education programs, which are actually disappearing, especially in small vocational-type universities and the private sector. However, Hokkaido University took a di4erent approach; we decided to keep and strengthen the general education programs, which were continuously articulated to each of the specialty programs.
3. Strategic planning The strategy of having excellent undergraduate programs together with prominent graduate programs is based on the following considerations. (1) Hokkaido University has a long history of liberal arts education starting from Sapporo Agricultural College established in 1876 and the tradition should be maintained. (2) We began an interinstitutional general education system as early as 1949 in the spirit of giving the best general education using the best sta4. The idea is still right. (3) General education, in a wider sense, should occupy the main position in contemporary undergraduate programs. Under the leadership of President Tambo and the Center for R&D in Higher Education, the general education committee discussed programs, and the curriculum was reformed in 2001 through the interdisciplinary education system. The general education program consists of 9 groups: (1) Thought and Languages (2) Historical Perspective (3) Arts and Literature
58
(4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)
M. Ogasawara / Higher Education Policy 15 (2002) 55 – 60
Perceptions of Society The World of Science and Technology Interdisciplinary Subjects Foreign Languages Common Subjects (Sports, Information Science, Statistics, etc.) Basic Sciences (Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Earth Science)
Although we are still debating the new concept of contemporary liberal arts, attention is now focusing on a common core curriculum for the undergraduate students (Hokkaido University, 2001a). Its main elements must be extracted from traditional liberal arts, which have survived throughout the long history of higher education. Subjects such as philosophy, history, literature, and integrated science should continue to be compulsory subjects for all the students entering the university. Other elements are “interdisciplinary liberal arts”, which are created by fusing two or more traditional 6elds responding to the development of society under certain up-to-date themes such as “environment” and “science of human beings”. The traditional liberal arts and sciences should be “humanized” and given to non-specialized students by the best professors in the 6elds. On the other hand, interdisciplinary liberal arts and sciences should be prepared via cooperation with many di4erent schools (Abe et al., 1999). The Center for R&D in Higher Education is exploring and promoting a new type of course for general education utilizing the facilities owned by the university. Traditionally, teaching in Hokkaido University has appreciated students’ experiences with nature. In the early Sapporo Agricultural College of the late 19th century, all students were supposed to make an exploration trip in summer vacation around the island of Hokkaido, which was then sparsely inhabited at that time. Thus, people came to have a special image of Hokkaido University connected to nature-oriented higher education. However, in actuality, such an image is true only in limited specialty programs for agriculture, geography, earth science, and environmental science. The new project aims at opening up such a course to freshmen who are not necessarily going to go into these 6elds. In an experimental course in Livestock Farming, for example, 60 freshmen and women joined and, by way of group learning, they studied the relationships among nature, agriculture, and human beings on the basis of practical work (Shimizu, Hata, Sasa, Abe, & Matsuda, 1999). Recently, a 7oating university course using a deep-sea-navigation training ship owned by the faculty of 6shery was held successfully.
4. Graduate education What, then, should be done for graduate education? Until 2000, all faculty members in Hokkaido University, like in other 7agship national universities, were promoted to those for graduate schools. From the earliest days of higher education in Japan, graduate schools had no full-time teachers for their programs and, were considered as schools attached to universities. But, with the institutional change, graduate schools took the place of “colleges (gakubu)” and became main units in the major research universities.
M. Ogasawara / Higher Education Policy 15 (2002) 55 – 60
59
Now, teachers in graduate schools teach both undergraduate and graduate students, meaning that undergraduate schools have become “attached schools” instead. Faculty members are grouped on the basis of discipline for doctoral programs in graduate schools and are theoretically independent from educational organizations, at least at the undergraduate level. Thus, the faculty of one disciplinary area is obliged to teach students at di4erent levels. This institutional change had considerable e4ects on the planning at each research university in Japan. Recently, a task force, mainly organized by deans of various schools, for strategic planning of Hokkaido University reported on the “The Vision of Hokkaido University in 21st Century (Hokkaido University, 2001b)”. First, undergraduate schools should be separated from each of the graduate schools and uni6ed into one common school. In this school the core curriculum and basic arts and sciences which lead to each specialized programs should be the main concerns. For undergraduates, late specialization is recommended. Even now, students have diHculty in choosing their own specialty when they choose universities and sometimes want to change their schools after entering universities. Later specialization in the future undergraduate program will enable the university to cope with such a change in students’ attitudes and give them a good chance to choose their own specialties after experience in the university programs. Second, graduate programs for professional purposes, especially those for the masters degree, should be created. At present, academic goals and non-academic, professional goals sometimes coexist in one educational program and the purpose of the program as a whole is not explicitly stated. Although the university may include both types of graduate schools and a majority may be those for academic purposes, more professional graduate programs comprising di4erent departments are required. The university should o4er programs consisting mainly of course work for non-traditional, part-time students, in which research programs for writing a thesis may be considered of secondary importance. The institutional separation of the faculty from the educational programs may facilitate the development of such a program. Third, doctoral courses for academic purposes should be strengthened if they are to survive and prosper in the world wide megacompetition in research. In this kind of graduate programs, early specialization is recommended for selected, able students. They should be trained in excellent research groups in each 6eld. Strategic planning for future research in Hokkaido University is now being discussed by another task force. 5. Conclusion Hokkaido University educational system may serve as a possible model for Japan’s research universities for the next generation. In this arrangement, the common core curriculum, the essential part of the undergraduate education, is supported by an interdisciplinary education system. This system is “a university in the university” in the sense that the essence of each specialized 6eld is abstracted and reorganized into a consistent program for non-specialized students. In contrast, the graduate programs for each department should be more 7exible so they 6t the competitive environment in
60
M. Ogasawara / Higher Education Policy 15 (2002) 55 – 60
the changing research world. Such a combination of strong research-oriented graduate programs and well-organized general education programs is possible and necessary for the universities in the present century. References Abe, K., Ogasawara, M., Nishimori, T., Hosokawa, T., Nitta, T., Yoshino, E., Shiratori, Y., Yamaguchi, K., Koizumi, I., Takasugi, M., Kobayashi, H., Sakai, R., & Hasegawa, J. (1999). Journal of Higher Education and Lifelong Learning, 6, 77–90. Clark, B., & Neave, G. (Eds.) (1992). Encyclopedia of higher education 1: Japan. Pergamon Press Ltd. Hokkaido University (2001a). Guidebook for Freshmen (bilingual): what is the core curriculum? Sapporo: Hokkaido University. Hokkaido University (2001b). Final Report in 2000th of the Working Group for Strategic Planning: the Vision of Hokkaido University in 21st Century. Sapporo: Hokkaido University. University Council (1998). Report of University Council on the Vision of the Universities in the 21st Century and Policies for Reform. Tokyo: University Council. University Council (2000). Report of University Council on Admission Systems. Tokyo: University Council. Shimizu, H., Hata, H., Sasa, K., Abe, K., & Matsuda, K. (1999). Journal of Higher Education and Lifelong Learning, 6, 126–138.
Strategic planning of the graduate and undergraduate education in a research university in Japan Masaaki Ogasawara ∗ Center for Research and Development in Higher Education, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0817, Japan
Abstract As a consequence of the toning down of the University Standards in 1991, many universities in Japan changed their institutional arrangements for undergraduate education. Generally speaking, new curricula put emphasis on specialty programs in each department resulting in relatively weaker general education programs. However, Hokkaido University decided to keep and strengthen the general education programs, which were continuously articulated to each of the specialty programs. The arrangements are a possible model for research universities in Japan of the next generation. In this arrangement the common core curriculum, the essential part of the undergraduate education, is supported by an interdisciplinary education system. The system is “a university in the university” in the sense that it o4ers a consistent program made of essence of each specialized 6eld abstracted and reorganized for non-specialized students. In contrast, the graduate programs for each department should be more 7exible so that they 6t the competitive environment in the changing research world. The model is discussed on the basis of the proc 2002 posals by a task force for strategic planning of Hokkaido University in 21st century. International Association of Universities. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Japan’s higher education has reached the universal stage according to criteria proposed by Martin Trow (Problems in Transition from Elite to Mass Higher Education, Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, Berkeley, CA, 1973). Nearly, 50% of young people enroll in higher education institutes (HEI) including four-year universities and two-year junior colleges with another 21% in various vocational institutions ∗
Fax: +81-011-706-7521.
c 2002 International Association of Universities. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. 0952-8733/02/$22.00 All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 5 2 - 8 7 3 3 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 3 5 - 6
56
M. Ogasawara / Higher Education Policy 15 (2002) 55 – 60
in the year 2000 (University Council, 2000). With the change of the participation rate, students’ attitudes are also changing quickly. The well-known elitism among students has already disappeared even in major research universities. Instead, students have started to think about the quality of education in conjunction with the amount of money they or their parents spend. This is quite a new experience for higher education in Japan. Obviously, the free-market ideology is going to be predominate not only in the private sector but also in the public sector of higher education in Japan. 2. Problems on general education Despite these dramatic changes in students’ attitudes, the response of universities, especially that of established national universities, was slow. Faculty meetings, the main decision-making machine in the university, devoted much time to obtaining consensus among academic sta4. Teachers have paid much more attention to their own research projects than to their teaching obligations. They used to stick to the archaic view that students were more or less mature learners with basic skills and were able to 6nd their own academic interests without the explicit guidance of teachers. Because of this attitude, professors in major research universities were not necessarily keen to improve their teaching strategy and teaching skills for a long time. Besides this, too much specialization, especially in the 6elds of humanities, natural sciences, and technologies, made it diHcult for students to understand the relevance of undergraduate education to their own interests and future jobs. Such a feeling of discontent among students emerges most frequently in classes of general education. Responding to the growing social dissatisfaction, the University Council encouraged the universities in their reports in 1998 to promote reform of liberal or general education in undergraduate programs (University Council, 1998). Similar problems may be easily seen in other countries, but those of general education in Japan have somewhat more complicated roots. After World War II, higher education in Japan changed drastically. All the “Imperial” universities, including Hokkaido Imperial University, were abolished (Clark & Neave, 1992). Various professional colleges, high schools, and normal schools were integrated, and as many as 69 “democratic” national universities were established in 1949 according to the principle of “one university for one prefecture”. The undergraduate program of the newly established universities was divided into two periods: the initial two-year period was devoted to general education and the latter two-year period to specialized education in each department. Newly established schools of general education were in charge of the programs for freshmen and sophomores. Although a di4erent philosophy was needed to run the new educational institutions, academic people were too busy to cope with the new circumstances and simply considered the general education program as a slightly modi6ed version of the former high school program in prewar times; i.e. a preparatory program that mainly consisted of liberal arts and sciences for the advanced, specialized courses in each school in universities. In short, the former three-year high school program was shortened to a two-year general education program and the former three-year university program was shortened to a two-year specialized university program.
M. Ogasawara / Higher Education Policy 15 (2002) 55 – 60
57
The general education curriculum was strictly assigned by the University Standards and the Junior College Standards, and kept intact for as long as 40 years. During those years, universities in Japan evolved from the elite stage to the mass. The faculty of general education su4ered because they had too many students to teach, poor facilities, and discrimination against them in the sense that they were less well funded and had a much greater teaching obligation than the specialized schools. As a consequence of the toning down of the University Standards and the Junior College Standards in 1991, many universities changed their institutional arrangements for undergraduate education. Among national universities, only the University of Tokyo and Tokyo Medical and Dental University retained the schools for general education without any institutional change. In other universities, like Kyoto, newly established institutes such as Faculty of Integrated Science or Faculty of Integrated Humanistic Science took charge of general education. Most universities chose a four-year integrated undergraduate education program and dissolved the faculty for general education. Many created interinstitutional education systems for general education, mostly organized by committee members from each school. The real meaning of “reform” is thus di4erent from university to university. Generally speaking, new curricula put emphasis on specialty programs in each department resulting in relatively weaker general education programs, which are actually disappearing, especially in small vocational-type universities and the private sector. However, Hokkaido University took a di4erent approach; we decided to keep and strengthen the general education programs, which were continuously articulated to each of the specialty programs.
3. Strategic planning The strategy of having excellent undergraduate programs together with prominent graduate programs is based on the following considerations. (1) Hokkaido University has a long history of liberal arts education starting from Sapporo Agricultural College established in 1876 and the tradition should be maintained. (2) We began an interinstitutional general education system as early as 1949 in the spirit of giving the best general education using the best sta4. The idea is still right. (3) General education, in a wider sense, should occupy the main position in contemporary undergraduate programs. Under the leadership of President Tambo and the Center for R&D in Higher Education, the general education committee discussed programs, and the curriculum was reformed in 2001 through the interdisciplinary education system. The general education program consists of 9 groups: (1) Thought and Languages (2) Historical Perspective (3) Arts and Literature
58
(4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)
M. Ogasawara / Higher Education Policy 15 (2002) 55 – 60
Perceptions of Society The World of Science and Technology Interdisciplinary Subjects Foreign Languages Common Subjects (Sports, Information Science, Statistics, etc.) Basic Sciences (Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Earth Science)
Although we are still debating the new concept of contemporary liberal arts, attention is now focusing on a common core curriculum for the undergraduate students (Hokkaido University, 2001a). Its main elements must be extracted from traditional liberal arts, which have survived throughout the long history of higher education. Subjects such as philosophy, history, literature, and integrated science should continue to be compulsory subjects for all the students entering the university. Other elements are “interdisciplinary liberal arts”, which are created by fusing two or more traditional 6elds responding to the development of society under certain up-to-date themes such as “environment” and “science of human beings”. The traditional liberal arts and sciences should be “humanized” and given to non-specialized students by the best professors in the 6elds. On the other hand, interdisciplinary liberal arts and sciences should be prepared via cooperation with many di4erent schools (Abe et al., 1999). The Center for R&D in Higher Education is exploring and promoting a new type of course for general education utilizing the facilities owned by the university. Traditionally, teaching in Hokkaido University has appreciated students’ experiences with nature. In the early Sapporo Agricultural College of the late 19th century, all students were supposed to make an exploration trip in summer vacation around the island of Hokkaido, which was then sparsely inhabited at that time. Thus, people came to have a special image of Hokkaido University connected to nature-oriented higher education. However, in actuality, such an image is true only in limited specialty programs for agriculture, geography, earth science, and environmental science. The new project aims at opening up such a course to freshmen who are not necessarily going to go into these 6elds. In an experimental course in Livestock Farming, for example, 60 freshmen and women joined and, by way of group learning, they studied the relationships among nature, agriculture, and human beings on the basis of practical work (Shimizu, Hata, Sasa, Abe, & Matsuda, 1999). Recently, a 7oating university course using a deep-sea-navigation training ship owned by the faculty of 6shery was held successfully.
4. Graduate education What, then, should be done for graduate education? Until 2000, all faculty members in Hokkaido University, like in other 7agship national universities, were promoted to those for graduate schools. From the earliest days of higher education in Japan, graduate schools had no full-time teachers for their programs and, were considered as schools attached to universities. But, with the institutional change, graduate schools took the place of “colleges (gakubu)” and became main units in the major research universities.
M. Ogasawara / Higher Education Policy 15 (2002) 55 – 60
59
Now, teachers in graduate schools teach both undergraduate and graduate students, meaning that undergraduate schools have become “attached schools” instead. Faculty members are grouped on the basis of discipline for doctoral programs in graduate schools and are theoretically independent from educational organizations, at least at the undergraduate level. Thus, the faculty of one disciplinary area is obliged to teach students at di4erent levels. This institutional change had considerable e4ects on the planning at each research university in Japan. Recently, a task force, mainly organized by deans of various schools, for strategic planning of Hokkaido University reported on the “The Vision of Hokkaido University in 21st Century (Hokkaido University, 2001b)”. First, undergraduate schools should be separated from each of the graduate schools and uni6ed into one common school. In this school the core curriculum and basic arts and sciences which lead to each specialized programs should be the main concerns. For undergraduates, late specialization is recommended. Even now, students have diHculty in choosing their own specialty when they choose universities and sometimes want to change their schools after entering universities. Later specialization in the future undergraduate program will enable the university to cope with such a change in students’ attitudes and give them a good chance to choose their own specialties after experience in the university programs. Second, graduate programs for professional purposes, especially those for the masters degree, should be created. At present, academic goals and non-academic, professional goals sometimes coexist in one educational program and the purpose of the program as a whole is not explicitly stated. Although the university may include both types of graduate schools and a majority may be those for academic purposes, more professional graduate programs comprising di4erent departments are required. The university should o4er programs consisting mainly of course work for non-traditional, part-time students, in which research programs for writing a thesis may be considered of secondary importance. The institutional separation of the faculty from the educational programs may facilitate the development of such a program. Third, doctoral courses for academic purposes should be strengthened if they are to survive and prosper in the world wide megacompetition in research. In this kind of graduate programs, early specialization is recommended for selected, able students. They should be trained in excellent research groups in each 6eld. Strategic planning for future research in Hokkaido University is now being discussed by another task force. 5. Conclusion Hokkaido University educational system may serve as a possible model for Japan’s research universities for the next generation. In this arrangement, the common core curriculum, the essential part of the undergraduate education, is supported by an interdisciplinary education system. This system is “a university in the university” in the sense that the essence of each specialized 6eld is abstracted and reorganized into a consistent program for non-specialized students. In contrast, the graduate programs for each department should be more 7exible so they 6t the competitive environment in
60
M. Ogasawara / Higher Education Policy 15 (2002) 55 – 60
the changing research world. Such a combination of strong research-oriented graduate programs and well-organized general education programs is possible and necessary for the universities in the present century. References Abe, K., Ogasawara, M., Nishimori, T., Hosokawa, T., Nitta, T., Yoshino, E., Shiratori, Y., Yamaguchi, K., Koizumi, I., Takasugi, M., Kobayashi, H., Sakai, R., & Hasegawa, J. (1999). Journal of Higher Education and Lifelong Learning, 6, 77–90. Clark, B., & Neave, G. (Eds.) (1992). Encyclopedia of higher education 1: Japan. Pergamon Press Ltd. Hokkaido University (2001a). Guidebook for Freshmen (bilingual): what is the core curriculum? Sapporo: Hokkaido University. Hokkaido University (2001b). Final Report in 2000th of the Working Group for Strategic Planning: the Vision of Hokkaido University in 21st Century. Sapporo: Hokkaido University. University Council (1998). Report of University Council on the Vision of the Universities in the 21st Century and Policies for Reform. Tokyo: University Council. University Council (2000). Report of University Council on Admission Systems. Tokyo: University Council. Shimizu, H., Hata, H., Sasa, K., Abe, K., & Matsuda, K. (1999). Journal of Higher Education and Lifelong Learning, 6, 126–138.