Government will wield its power over educational research

The ruling coalition on May 22 again used its majority force to railroad through a bill to enable the state to intervene in studies and research at universities through the Lower House plenary session and sent the bill to the Upper House.

The bill designates that the minister of education and science will decide mid-term objectives of studies and management of each university after changing the status of the present government-run universities into corporate entities.

Then, a government organ will assess their achievements based on the mid-term objectives and will accordingly decide the amounts of subsidy for each entity.

Japanese Communist Party Kodama Kenji protested against the bulldozed vote on the bill with only 13 hours of discussion in total. He demanded that the bill be scrapped because it will provide the state power to control educational research and will lead to the hollowing out of universities' autonomy. (end)