Yoshiyuki IIMURA
Faculty employment practices at Japan’s provincial private universities are also distinctive. A considerable number of “professors” are not engaged in research, have never written an academic paper, and some hold only a bachelor’s degree. This situation is the result of a system that allows “practitioner faculty”—individuals with professional experience in business or government—to be appointed as professors.
What has this system brought to small private universities in regional areas? It has created positions that university executives can offer as “amakudari” posts to retired officials from politics and business. University executives themselves are often composed of such retirees, including early retirees from senior executives from local companies or the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)—this arrangement also raises potential conflicts of interest. It should also be noted that placing individuals close to the administration on a faculty senate—the decision making body of a faculty—effectively undermines the autonomy of education and research, while strengthening the power of university executives.
Hiring retired personnel also contributes to cost savings and puts downward pressure on overall salary levels. Many of these individuals are already pension recipients, so they are willing to accept relatively low pay as long as they can hold a socially recognized position as a professor—also because their pension benefits are sometimes insufficient to sustain their livelihood. In workplaces where such faculty make up a significant proportion, the collective bargaining power of employees is severely weakened.
Under this system, hiring can occur regardless of research record, which allows university executives’ personnel authority to expand significantly. In theory, the faculty senate is supposed to deliberate on educational policy and faculty appointments, but in practice, it functions merely to provide formal ratification for decisions already made by the board of trustees at the university where I worked. In Japan’s private universities, the highest legal authority does not belong to the academic faculty or the university president, but to the board of trustees.
Also, although the university formally maintains a board of trustees, in practice nearly all decision-making authority is concentrated in the hands of the board chair. Since most board members are appointed by the chair and their reappointments or compensations depend on his discretion, there exists no effective mechanism to check or restrain his power. Under such a closed and hierarchical governance structure, the university’s decisions become subordinated to the chair’s personal judgments and interests.
This concentration of power can also distort the distribution of institutional resources. At the university where I worked, while common areas used daily by students have lacked basic facilities such as adequate air conditioning or reliable internet access for years, the chair commutes in a chauffeur-driven car—you can see a brand-new fully customized Toyota Alphard in front of the main building of the university. Given that inadequate air conditioning in the gymnasium has raised concerns about students being at risk of heatstroke, it indicates the university’s budgeting priorities. This patrimonialism is manifesting itself as hereditary succession. The daughter of the chair, who didn’t seem to have enough experience in university governance, was appointed as a executive director, and is now the vice-chair.
We can find several examples of how this concentration of power has affected university governance. The Faculty of Economics and Management where I belonged to currently employs several popular “academic personalities”—who are better known for their media exposure than for any scholarly contribution—as specially appointed professors. Their fields of expertise are clearly unrelated to economics or management. These appointments would never have been possible on academic grounds, yet they were justified as being beneficial for the university’s public image. In practice, however, some of them has barely engaged in any actual teaching or research duties: one of them delivers on-demand lectures recorded several years ago, handles only the grading, and visits the campus perhaps a few times a year. Moreover, the university has even granted an honorary professorship to a ruling-party politician.
One might wonder why such unchecked concentration of power is not subject to supervision by the government. In practice, MEXT’s supervision of private universities is largely formal and administrative. The ministry reviews documents to ensure legal compliance and the proper use of government subsidies, but it rarely intervenes in internal governance or personnel matters. This situation stems from the legal framework of Japan’s Private School Act, under which each private university is operated by an independent educational corporation. The law grants these corporations broad autonomy, and in the Japanese context, “university autonomy” has come to mean the autonomy of the corporate board, rather than that of the academic faculty. Moreover, the presence of former MEXT officials among university executives makes administrative intervention even less likely.
In short, this “autonomy” means that, for the university’s board chair, everything is possible. It was this very power that made my dismissal possible. Around this center of authority, a variety of people dance. A former colleague I respect once described the state of the university—where countless conflicting interests move in the shadows and every faculty member harbors quiet suspicion for each other—as something out of Bertolucci’s The Spider’s Stratagem. Yet, he forgot to add: there are no heroes’ tragedies there—only a comedy played out over thirty pieces of silver.