Waseda’s Strategies for the 21st Century:
Co-Creation of Academic Excellence in the Asia-Pacific Region
Katsuhiko Shirai, Dr. Eng.
President, Waseda University, Japan
1. External Changes Affecting the Operation and Management of Japanese Universities
The university has two major functions. One is the educational function for producing highly cultured people, and the other is the laboratory function for conducting fundamental research to establish intellectual infrastructures. Like all other universities around the world, universities in Japan to this day have been developing organizations and schemes for smooth implementation of these functions.
However, the environment surrounding Japanese universities has drastically changed in recent years. The demographic decline is seriously affecting university management, while the demand for practical education and research from the high technology industries has forced the universities to focus on industrial-academic collaboration. The maturing of society has provoked the people’s desire for lifelong education, creating new needs for classes in more specialized fields. Also, the current trend of globalization has resulted in an intensive increase in the numbers of international students studying at Japanese universities.
National university reform efforts in Japan, such as the transformation of national universities into independent administrative corporations and the third-party evaluation carried out by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, are forcing the universities to change the conventional way of operation and management known as an ‘armed convoy system’. The universities have now shifted gears to an era of close competition, in which they are expected to develop their distinctive education and research on the basis of autonomic and independent management, in order to clarify their roles and survive external environmental changes.
2. New Mission and Reorganization of Universities as the Consequence of External Operation and Management Changes
In the midst of such drastic environmental changes, the new social mission for the universities in Japan is ‘the multipurpose application of university functions to create joint intellectual products with the community’. In other words, universities are expected to nurture individuals who could contribute to society, instead of developing education and research systems closed within the academic institution, as well as to cooperate and collaborate with the local citizens, enterprises, administrative bodies, and other elements of society to create new knowledge and intellectual properties.
In other words, we should work toward achieving the following goals:
1) For the citizens, to create new knowledge through the enhancement of lifelong education and participating in NPOs, NGOs, and voluntary activities for the public good;
2) For enterprises, to create knowledge by promoting industrial-academic collaborative research, transferring intellectual properties from the universities to corporations, and establishing industrial-academic venture companies;
3) For local areas, to establish educational businesses in which the local enterprises and university students will participate and cooperate to create ideas for regional prosperity;
4) For administrative bodies, to utilize the universities as their ‘think tank’ for drafting new government policies, evaluating the social systems, and other political issues.
It is necessary for Japanese universities to make use of the extensive worldwide network built in the past and to create high-quality international intellectual products and properties.
3. Waseda University’s Strategies for the 21st Century
Waseda University will celebrate its 125th anniversary in 2007, considered to be the first year of ‘the Second Century of Waseda University’. Our three major objectives in the coming new century shall be: 1) making challenges for innovative forefront research; 2) making the whole university available as a facility for lifelong education; and 3) nurturing global citizens. In order to achieve these objectives, we are currently trying to renovate and strengthen our academic research functions for maximizing our contribution to the society.
Specifically, Waseda has been undertaking the following:
a. Establishing new graduate and professional graduate schools;
b. Launching the School of International Liberal Studies;
c. Starting a distance-learning program;
d. Promoting industrial-academic collaboration research activities;
e. Fostering venture companies established by university students;
f. Encouraging collaboration with regional and local citizens, enterprises, and governments.
Waseda University puts special emphasis on creating a world-class research base and producing globally competent individuals. We will keep striving to accumulate intellectual properties and new projects to serve as the core of the Asian intellectual community, constructing a global network through an extensive exchange of intellectual assets.
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