University officials warn of “a crisis here and now” at the progressively impoverished national universities: “They want us to donate from our retirement funds…

So we can use graduate students cheaply under the guise of education…”

I wonder if “industry-government-academia collaboration” means that the private sector is eating away at academia. ……

When the bubble economy burst, private companies started closing their own research institutes. So, universities took over for them. Rather than having their own research centers, they give universities millions of yen to conduct research.

Graduate students are almost forced to work for free. Even so, they are able to make a somewhat richer living than before, so the universities accept it.

They can use graduate students cheaply under the guise of education. It must be very efficient for private carriers,” said Associate Professor B.

Incidentally, Professor A says that famous universities in the U.S. have large funds to which alumni have accumulated huge donations over the past 200 to 300 years, and the universities are enriched by these funds.

In Europe, graduate students are also paid and treated as researchers, adds Associate Professor B. “In both Europe and the U.S., graduate students are paid for their work,” he says.

In both Europe and the U.S., there are unions for graduate students. In Europe and the U.S., graduate students have unions, so they go on strike and have their salaries raised, but this is not the case in Japan. The way they are treated is fundamentally different” (Associate Professor B).

Decide the amount of money to be granted to universities based on the actual use of the miner card?

There was also a report that linked university attendance to the mynacard and that the amount of money given to universities was determined based on the actual use of the mynacard, which drew criticism. What happened to that in the end?

I spoke with someone from the Ministry of Education and Science, and he said that is not the case.

They said that if a national university writes in its mid-term management plan that it uses the miner card for attendance, the amount of the grant may be reduced if the university fails to achieve the goal.

However, in fact, almost all national universities are induced to write about the use of the miner card in their mid-term management plans. We have not yet reached the point where budget allocation is determined by the utilization rate of the miner card, but if we wanted to, we could do so at any time” (Mr. D).

Incidentally, Professor A gave us the following example of the point at which the increase or decrease in the amount of budget allocated to national universities is determined.