Quality Assurance and Higher Education in Japan

Abstract

The modern higher education system of Japan was introduced in the late nineteenth century when the first university, the “Imperial University,” was established in Tokyo in 1887. This university aimed at modernizing Japan by importing the most advanced knowledge from overseas for the training of future elites. The number of universities in Japan gradually increased to 46 in the 1940s. In addition to these universities, various other kinds of higher education institutions emerged with different missions and enjoyed different levels of prestige. Although the role of these institutions was to nurture talented students, people realized that higher education was valuable in other ways for their future life—a fact that would lead in time to the so-called examination hell problem I discuss below.