The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology has announced that it will shorten the support period for private university research branding projects, which support research that sets out the unique characteristics of universities, from the conventional maximum of 5 years to a uniform 3 years, and will not select new ones after FY2019.The project will be abolished in 2020 due to the inability to secure a budget due to the corruption incident surrounding the project.
According to the Ministry of Education, the project has been subsidizing research for private universities for up to five years to create a unique color. In 5, research projects from 2018 schools nationwide, including Tsuda College, Doshisha University, and Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, were adopted.The total number of schools selected so far is 20.
A corruption case involving the project was discovered in 2018, and the former director of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology was arrested and charged with bribery charges for passing his son to Tokyo Medical University in return for facilitating the selection of the target school.
Since the budget for 2018 was secured before the incident was discovered, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology selected 20 schools while being checked by lawyers, but the incident made it difficult to secure the budget in the future, so the project was started. We have decided to discontinue support for selected schools in 2016 and 2017, which started in 2019.
The management base of Japanese universities is becoming jeopardized due to the declining 18-year-old population, and international recognition has not risen due to the delay in internationalization, and there are voices that are worried about the future.In order to solve these problems, the project aims to enhance the brand power of the university through the research project of the faculty of signboards, but after the corruption case was discovered, experts have criticized the method.
