Page 123 - Open and Distance Education In Asia : Good Practice From AAOU Members

Asian Association of Open Universities (AAOU) 103

institutions being created in response to the altered the structure of higher education.
public educational demands, and once they Higher education was united in 1949
have grown and become socially established, under the single designation “university”
they are publicly recognized by their position in terms of curriculum, length, admission
when viewed from the Imperial Universities. procedures, instructor standards, graduation
Educational institutions have been given requirements, educational circumstances,
official names (vocational schools, high etc. Schools that did not meet certain
schools, specialized training colleges, etc.) standards, which were mainly girls’
and officially recognized each time their educational institutions, were regarded as
place in society has become settled, as if they junior colleges, but since they were regarded
are individual ores that crystallize from the as tentative forms that would be converted
chaos of magma in descending order of their into four-year universities, fundamentally
melting points. the simple scheme of “higher education =
university education” was established. 4
Of course, not all higher education
institutions were linearly integrated into the However, soon after this system of “higher
hierarchy with the Imperial Universities at education Equals university education” was
the top. For example, higher teaching schools formed, numerous forces were exerted
and specialist business schools formed toward diversification. For example, in 1951,
a “collateral system” that was separate the Ordinance Revision Advisory Committee
from the Imperial Universities, and in that proposed dividing universities into academic
sense, it can be said that Japan’s higher “ordinary universities” and “specialized
education prior to the World War II had a universities” focused on the transfer of
multidimensional structure that was “diverse specialized skills, and in 1962, technical
and specialized, and each had its own system colleges were established, leading in a new
of advancement.” 3 non-university system (mostly industrial).
Nevertheless, they were never able to break
The General Headquarters of the Supreme the scheme’s framework, either in terms
Commander for the Allied Powers (GHQ) led of influence or absolute quantity. Rather,
postwar education reform that drastically 4. Kazuyuki Kitamura, “Institutional Structure of ‘Post-
Secondary Education’ in Japan” Hiroshima University,
3. Ikuo Amano, “Higher Education System Theory – University Education and Research Center, “University
Search for a Japanese Model” in Shigeo Kono and Ikuo Theory,” Vol. 7 (1979), p. 25.
Arai eds., “Structure and Challenges of Contemporary
Education” Gyosei (1978), p. 180.

The Open University of Japan (OUJ)