This article attempts to investigate the relationship between the massification of higher education, labour market and social mobility in contemporary China. Though only a short period of time has elapsed from elite to mass education, China's higher education has been characterised as a wide, pervasive massification process. Similar to other East…

This report is one in a series of country studies prepared in the framework of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Education Committee activity on changing patterns of finance in higher education. In order to contribute to the OECD activity from the Japanese perspective, the Research Institute for Higher Education at…

The current emphasis on excellence, it is suggested, is used as an excuse to exclude. The more people who are educated, the greater the possibility that collective decisions will be of better quality. Higher education must become more open and more inclusive. (MLW)

A brief history of the Japanese higher education system chronicles its two principal phases since the mid-nineteenth century. In the first, "window-shopping" mode, many Western models were explored and some partially adopted. In the "involvement" mode, specific Western models were adopted. The uniqueness of the Japanese…

Burakumin, Japan's largest minority group, have been discriminated against throughout Japanese history for engaging in jobs that were considered to be defiling, e.g., slaughterers, tanners, and undertakers. Specifically, burakumin played the social and occupational roles despised by the majority Japanese, but those without which the Japanese…

Considers criticisms of Japanese higher education focusing on weak links between curricula and societal/professional needs. Analyzes social and policy developments in the early 1990s as they relate to system design, governance and financing, access/admission, teaching and research, relationship of education to careers, and graduate study.…