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2017 February 8 - 14 [POLITICS]

JCP Miyamoto reveals cosy ties between ex-official and Waseda Univ.

The president of a university into which a retired bureaucrat, who was responsible for a university project, parachuted was the proposer of that project.

Japanese Communist Party member of the House of Representatives Miyamoto Takeshi on February 7 revealed this questionable relationship between the ex-senior official and the university during an intensive deliberation held at the House of Budget Committee regarding the issue of the Education Ministry’s systematic job placement practice.

Miyamoto explained the progress of the collusive relation involving Yoshida Daisuke, former chief of the ministry’s Higher Education Bureau, and Kamata Kaoru, president of Waseda University.

The government in June 2013 at a Cabinet meeting decided to launch a project to prioritize financial support to universities conducting globally competitive research. One month before this decision, the expert panel, Council for the Implementation of Education Rebuilding, proposed this idea to the Prime Minister Office. The head of this panel was Kamata and the official in charge when the Education Ministry actually started the project was Yoshida, the very person who was later awarded a position as a professor at that university. After the first public invitation for applications in April 2014, the Ministry included Waseda among the prioritized research institutions under the project.

Miyamoto pointed out that the amount of the project subsidy provided to Waseda has been increasing since then.

He explained that Yoshida at that time had the authority to decide on the Ministry’s academic subsidies and that this person took up a Waseda professorship only two months after his retirement from the Ministry in 2015.

The revelation made clear the favors exchanged: the ex-official had a role in favoring a particular educational establishment and the university in exchange awarded him a plum post at the university.

The JCP representative pointed out that this kind of practice will never stop as long as the government maintains the policy of increasing competitive research funds while cutting general grants to universities. He demanded that the government immediately terminate this policy as it has been causing many universities to have no other choice than to hire retired government officials in order to gain more subsidies.

Past related articles:
> Abe gov’t since its first term promoted golden parachutes for bureaucrats [January 24, 2017]
> Education Ministry illegally offers ‘parachuting’ support to its retired officials [January 19-23, 2017]