Japanese Private Universities in Comparative Perspective

Author(s):  
Jeremy Breaden ◽  
Roger Goodman

Private higher education is an increasingly significant, ramified, and yet still conspicuously understudied topic. This chapter sets out various established and emerging models of private higher education, explaining key variables such as the relationship with state authority, diversity of institutional structures and modes of governance, and the interplay of social and commercial missions. It then asks where the Japanese system fits within these models and suggests a number of features which Japan shares with other countries. One of these features is the reliance of the state on the demand-absorbing role of private institutions—not one which is peripheral to the public system but rather the dominant mode of higher education provision and especially important in periods of rapid growth in participation rates. The chapter proceeds to develop a more Japan-specific profile of the private sector, establishing the definitional scope of private higher education in Japan and placing the numerical dominance of the private sector in direct contrast with its absolute disadvantage in terms of public investment. It also explains that, despite this handicap, private institutions do enjoy certain privileges in terms of governance structures, taxation, and scope of operations, and also boast distinctive educational strengths. To provide a context for understanding these features, the chapter also provides an in-depth history of the Japanese private university. This is offered as a conscious alternative to more orthodox historical accounts which tend to place national universities in the limelight and treat their private counterparts as a cast of supporting characters.

Author(s):  
Wayne Perry Webster ◽  
Zach P. Messitte

This chapter will examine emerging new norms across higher education in the United States following the recession of 2008-09. Colleges and universities face an environment increasingly made up of prospective students and their families shopping and bargaining for the best college deal; institutions are struggling to control student costs by raising discount rates; administrators are seeking to find new sources of revenue and programmatic niches; and faculty are increasingly focused on how to make their curriculum more unique and relevant. Finally, higher education leaders should closely examine long-held recruitment and financial aid strategies, cost structures, academic calendars and mission to meet the new situation. This chapter will summarize the development of the new landscape in public and private higher education, including the growing similarities facing public and private institutions including their common efforts to keep higher education affordable and accessible, and conclude with recommendations for administrators as they navigate their way through the new norm.


Author(s):  
Steven Brint ◽  
Jerome Karabel

No analysis of the history of the community college movement in Massachusetts can begin without a discussion of some of the peculiar features of higher education in that state. Indeed, the development of all public colleges in Massachusetts was, for many years, inhibited by the strength of the state’s private institutions (Lustberg 1979, Murphy 1974, Stafford 1980). The Protestant establishment had strong traditional ties to elite colleges—such as Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Williams, and Amherst—and the Catholic middle class felt equally strong bonds to the two Jesuit institutions in the state: Boston College and Holy Cross (Jencks and Riesman 1968, p. 263). If they had gone to college at all, most of Massachusetts’s state legislators had done so in the private system. Private college loyalties were not the only reasons for opposition to public higher education. Increased state spending for any purpose was often an anathema to many Republican legislators, and even most urban “machine” Democrats were unwilling to spend state dollars where the private sector appeared to work well enough (Stafford and Lustberg 1978). As late as 1950, the commonwealth’s public higher education sector served fewer than ten thousand students, just over 10 percent of total state enrollments in higher education. In 1960, public enrollment had grown to only 16 percent of the total, at a time when 59 percent of college students nationwide were enrolled in public institutions (Stafford and Lustberg 1978, p. 12). Indeed, the public sector did not reach parity with the private sector until the 1980s. Of the 15,945 students enrolled in Massachusetts public higher education in 1960, well over 95 percent were in-state students. The private schools, by contrast, cast a broader net: of the nearly 83,000 students enrolled in the private schools, more than 40 percent were from out of state (Organization for Social and Technical Innovation 1973). The opposition to public higher education began to recede in the late 1950s. Already by mid-decade, a large number of urban liberals had become members of the state legislature, and a new governor, Foster Furcolo, had been elected in 1956 on an activist platform.


Author(s):  
Jeremy Breaden ◽  
Roger Goodman

This chapter tells the story of Japanese higher education from 1992 to 2010, from a period of great stability to one of anticipated implosion. It outlines the widely agreed features of Japanese higher education in the early 1990s, including a clearly defined university hierarchy, high demand for university places, high fees, low drop-out rates, direct links to the labour market, low rates of progression to graduate education, high rate of academic inbreeding, and slow progress on internationalization. Overall, the system was seen as highly developed and relatively stable, but just 10 years later virtually all of these features were under challenge. 1992 saw a peak both in the number of 18-year-olds in the Japanese population and in the global power of the Japanese economy. As the economy went into slowdown and then stagnation and the number of 18-year-olds shrank precipitously, so the voices of those predicting an implosion in the private university sector became louder. The chapter explains why this implosion was considered inevitable because of three intersecting facts: students were recruited almost entirely from school leavers; participation rates were already high; and there would be a 40 per cent drop in the number of school leavers in the population between 1992 and 2010. It then introduces some of the assumptions which followed from this anticipated implosion: dramatic drops in enrolment and revenue; bankruptcies and closures; the search for new markets and modes of operation; a questioning of the whole value of a university degree.


Author(s):  
Snejana Slantcheva-Durst

Larger private higher education sectors are much more common across central and eastern Europe. After the fall of the communist regimes in 1989, private institutions of higher education multiplied to varying degrees in central and eastern Europe. The most recent trends reveal slow private growth in most of these countries. Declines in the number of people served by private institutions have been limited in range and time, yet have occurred in both the university and nonuniversity private sectors.


Author(s):  
Daniel Levy

Hugo Chavez's clash with Venezuelan higher education is a vivid present-day example of a history of confrontation between leftist, populist regimes and higher education in Latin America. Chavez has transformed the public sector through creation and expansion of new universities. Chavez's policies have alienated the country's private institutions of higher education. Both public and private universities are reduced in importance.


2017 ◽  
pp. 27-29
Author(s):  
Eldho Mathews

When it comes to university-level education in India, a majority of students and parents prefer government and government-aided private institutions, as contrasted with the strong presence of private providers at the primary and secondary levels. This article explores the range of providers at the tertiary level.


2006 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
David F. Labaree

I want to tell a story about American higher education. Like many historical accounts, this story has a contrapuntal quality. As we know, historians frequently find themselves trying to weave discordant themes into complex patterns in the hope of making harmony. The reason for this is that simple themes are hard to find in the account of any complex social institution, especially one like education, which is composed of a motley accumulation of historical residues and social functions. We often come across one point about education that makes sense and then find a counterpoint that also makes sense. If we cannot eliminate one in favor of the other, then we try to put them together in a way that does not violate the rules of harmony and historical logic. In the effort to do so we, therefore, find ourselves in the business of writing fugues.


e-Finanse ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 42-46
Author(s):  
Tomas Krabec ◽  
Romana Čižinská

Abstract The objective of the paper is to examine value creation in private higher education. The results of the research are to be applied in reasonable structuring of study programs and courses and for creating profitable business and marketing strategies for private universities. From a student perspective, higher education is a project that must generate a positive net present value. In the pre-investment and investment phases, students see cash outflows and opportunity costs. In the third phase, the project generates benefits that take the form of cash inflows from employment or doing business in the relevant field. The value of the study program from the perspective of a private university is produced by the present value of the future cash flows generated by the investment in the study program and its administration and operation. The main cash inflows are created by tuition revenues and the main cash outflows are brand-related investments and personnel costs. The market equilibrium occurs when the value of a degree program from the perspective of a private university corresponds to the total aggregate net present value of a degree program at a private university from a student perspective.


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