Private universities in Japan: Challenges and Approaches

Private universities and other higher education institutions have an important role in the implementation of economic, social and political development programs and achievement of countries to the development goals. So, many countries including Japan, have tried to establish and develop the private universities to take the advantages of their potential capabilities. Recently, private higher education institutions have been established and developed in our country too. Despite the necessity of quantitative development, these institutions face with many difficulties and challenges and so far they have failed to perform their task effectively. Through analysis of the private higher education experience in Japan, this study therefore, has sought effective approaches to tackle the private universities challenges. For this purpose, twelve papers and doctoral theses regarding Japanese private higher education were analyzed. The findings showed that this type of education faces with several challenges such as globalization of higher education, the development of information and communication technology, changes in the value of academic knowledge, shrinking the population of young people, strong government control, problems related to the allocation of allowances and competence with public universities. Some approaches have been proposed and developed to solve these challenges which can be utilized for relevant problems in the Iranian higher education context.