President Kazuo Motoyama of the school corporation and President Hiroshi Kawamura of Tokyo University of Science visited Mayor Chiyokazu Yanagihira at the city hall.President Motoyama said, "With the declining birthrate, it is necessary to consider making it public in order to continue and develop as an indispensable presence in the region," and submitted a request.In response, Mayor Yanagihira expressed his positive attitude toward future discussions, saying, "It is an indispensable university for Nagano prefecture within the Suwa area, and I would like to consider it firmly."

Suwa Tokyo University of Science was established in 2002.It has 2 faculties and 4 departments, the Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Management Information, but the number of students has been declining since 2006.Since 1990, when the predecessor of Doshisha University opened, the cumulative deficit has reached about 16 billion yen, and it has suffered from deterioration of management.
For this reason, in April 2014, at the request of the university, we started discussions with the city about the future of the university.Since then, Nagano Prefecture has joined the discussions, and we have exchanged opinions a total of six times.The results of the discussions so far will be published as a report, and it is expected that full-scale response studies will begin.
If the university becomes public, it will be possible to obtain a more generous local allocation tax grant than the previous private school subsidies.For this reason, the university expects that it will be possible to reduce tuition fees, which will be advantageous in the competition for students.On the other hand, the city recognizes that the university is necessary for regional development, and after hearing from neighboring municipalities, the business community, and experts, the pros and cons of publicization, the framework of the local government that will be the main body of establishment, the transition time, etc. I'm thinking of considering how to deal with it.

Suwa: Not only Tokyo University of Science, but many local private universities are suffering from student capacity shortages and poor management. The 18-year-old population is currently flat, but is expected to decline again sharply from 2018.This is the so-called "university 2018 issue".For this reason, there are a number of private universities such as Kochi University of Technology in Kochi Prefecture and Tottori Environmental University in Tottori Prefecture, as well as Asahikawa University in Hokkaido and Niigata Sangyo University in Niigata Prefecture.