Higher Education Governance and Institutional Research: The Emergence of a New Role in the Post-massification Era in Japan

Abstract

This chapter presents recent changes in Japanese higher education policy and analyzes its impact on higher education institutions in the post-massification era. It can be assumed that in the twenty-first century, economic forces will increasingly demand the production of new knowledge and the development of personnel through universities. No governments will be able to continue meeting such social demands for higher education without relatively abundant financing. Without question, Japan faces the same challenge. Both the private and public sectors of higher education in Japan will continue to confront limited financing, and issues of accountability will continue to emerge. In such environment, government control becomes stronger every than before. The issue of university governance has become a matter of extreme importance. Then, IR (institutional research) has been regarded as the effective tool for assisting university governance. As a result, IR offices will most likely become charged with the concrete responsibilities of collecting, quantifying and visualizing various types of internal university information, as well as managing such data in order to help the decision-making process for university governance. We conducted the nationwide survey for IR function for all Japanese four-year universities in 2014. This study will show the results of the survey and analyze the new role of IR of JHE. Then, this paper explores whether or not IR functions to support university governance in Japanese university and what kind of challenges we face in the post-massification stage.