Under this project, a study of policy trends is being conducted over a two year period beginning in fiscal 2006. It involves surveys and research on both the ideals and realities of higher education funding in Japan, with the aim of identifying challenges and future directions. In the course of this investigation, which includes cross-national comparisons, attention is paid to the scale of government expenditure as well as to issues such as apportionment methods and linkage with policies and programs. The core subject is expenditure on operation of national university corporations, but consideration is also given to private institutions and research funding. .

This study of developments in university reform was undertaken across three years beginning in fiscal 2005. There is a growing trend for universities to establish "center"-style organizations primarily to pursue educational improvements and learning support through activities such as FD (capacity development for university faculty members), class evaluation, and curriculum reform. Universities are also being required to address a growing variety of educational needs in areas such as career education and international student support, and they face important challenges in terms of developing organizational structures that can tackle these tasks effectively. This study uses empirical methods to investigate the organizational aims, structures, activities, and effects of center-style organizations in universities, and explores how best to develop them as "strategic organizations" conducive to educational reform.

  Fiscal 2006 marked the start of this three-year JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research project, which was conducted in order to conceive policies to support the process of reform in higher education institutions. The mention of cross-border competition among universities tends to evoke images of an Olympics-style contest among the top institutions from each nation; in practice, however, it is the middle-ranking universities that tend to be most heavily engaged in cross-border competition. In light of this situation, our project sought to address the questions of how the so-called "ordinary" universities in each country are maintaining the quality of their programs, and what policies are in place to support them.