The Region
Will Japan’s merging universities emerge triumphant?
For decades universities in Japan have merged together impacting recruitment and reputation, many more aspire to for survival or growth.
By Rohan Mehra
"Combining our strengths and increasing our size gains us leverage."
It's hard to find an article about social or economic matters in Japan that doesn’t draw attention to its now infamous aging population. And this one is no different. The country’s declining birthrate reduces domestic enrolment in universities, so the tertiary education sector must innovate in order to remain competitive, with mergers being one option.
According to Yushi Inaba, an Associate Professor of Management at the International Christian University, the proportion of the population at enrolment age halved over the last quarter century. In a 2020 paper, Inaba puts mergers as one of five key ‘survival strategies’ common to Japanese universities and, of around 30 that took place between 2002 and 2013, identified downsizing, expansion, and restructuring and diversification as the three main strategic goals behind them.
Downsizing can be seen as a cost saving measure from the perspective of the university or it’s governing body. Just a few years ago, two public universities in Osaka merged at the request of their respective governing authorities. Osaka Prefecture University (OPU), owned by the prefectural government, and Osaka City University (OCU), owned by the City of Osaka, became Osaka Metropolitan University (OMU).
“The main reason was cost reduction, by means of reducing administrative and capital overheads, and areas of overlap. Around 10 years ago, the Japan Innovation Party running both the city and prefecture thought they didn’t need two separate universities, so chose to merge them,” says Professor Masahide Takahashi, Vice Dean of the School of Engineering and advisor to the president.
“At first, both universities rejected the idea, each is very independent and has their own unique culture and history, but we had no choice. So as discussions began, we had to find advantages to the situation, and officially merged three years ago.”
Thanks to the merger, OMU is now the biggest public university in Japan, and third biggest among the national and public universities. This increase in size was one of the selling points the committee in charge used to appease some of the stronger dissenting voices amongst the faculty. As OPU and OCU specialised differently, OPU on agriculture and veterinary sciences and OCU on medicine, natural sciences and humanities, some areas merged with relative ease. However, both universities had strong engineering faculties with large facilities across Osaka, but the merger demanded unity.
“Merging these faculties was difficult as there is huge overlap of expertise within them. With the Engineering School we initially proposed to keep multiple campuses, but after a long discussion we settled on one in the South of Osaka. There were similar issues with some student clubs, some merged easily and willingly, others, some with proud traditions and vocal advocates, did not,” says Professor Takahashi.
“Though overall, things are looking up for OMU. Our combined size and broader connections throughout the prefecture and city expanded our reach to sections of government, private enterprises, and research institutions previously inaccessible to one or both institutions.”
Director-General of University Administration at OMU Komaki Ishii is also cautiously optimistic about the merger’s impacts. “Although the name changed, OMU has inherited the popularity of OCU and OPU. For two consecutive years since opening, OMU had the largest number of applicants of any public university, including the nationals,” she says. “I hope OMU will grow in reputation domestically and overseas. The merger allowed us to broaden our horizons and prioritise internationalisation more than before.”
As for cases of expansion, at the time of writing, two universities in Tokyo are officially opening their doors as a new university. Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) and Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) are becoming the Institute of Science Tokyo (Science Tokyo). Unlike in the Osaka case, Tokyo Tech and TMDU elected for this merger themselves.
“We had several motivations for doing this,” says Professor Naoto Ohtake, who will be the first President of Science Tokyo. “Combining our strengths and increasing our size gains us leverage and increases our likelihood we’ll obtain some of the Governments ten trillion-yen endowment, which could revolutionise the whole academic sector.
“And our key academic reason being, we want to tackle some of the bigger issues facing humanity, the COVID-19 pandemic was a wake-up call and demonstrates the need for more joined up thinking, and of course there are environmental issues to address with aims like Net Zero. So, we see the merger as building a bridge between our respective specialities to achieve this.”
Assistant Professor Mai Katakura, a medical researcher from TMDU has already seen gains from this idea. “Our department initiated several joint projects with Tokyo Tech researchers. This is very rewarding for us as it broadens the scope of what our research can achieve,” she says. “It came about from a ‘matching forum’ which was part of the merging process. I’d previously hoped to connect my biomedical research with engineers but lacked the kind of access I needed until now.”
Situations like that could help the new university appeal to talented researchers, improving its reputation, as could the potential boost to publications, if evidence from Chinese and Nordic universities is anything to go by. In a 2018 paper, Liu et al. found ‘[mergers] between a comprehensive university and a medical school resulted in significantly improved performance in terms of scholarly publications.’ The game is publish or perish after all. But those things take time, and action must be taken in the short term too.
“Some researchers worried their fields may be de-prioritised by the merger, but we’re expanding not downsizing, and plan to create three new research institutes which focus on curiosity, the future, and industrial cooperation respectively,” says Professor Ohtake. “These will lead to new positions we hope attract international and domestic talent and improve our diversity. We’ve appointed two specialists to focus on diversity and inclusion. Also, when I’ve met with high school groups here in Japan, it’s been reassuring how many young people seem enthusiastic about studying emerging fields at the conjunction of science, engineering, and medicine.”
These two, and many other merged universities, have and are using their combined strength to improve enrolment, recruitment, and reputation. However, in spite of this, Japan’s weakening economy adds another hurdle to the course. While groups of universities can help each other stay afloat for now through mergers and other ‘survival strategies’, those curious about the long-term future of Japan’s higher education sector ought to keep their eyes on its economy too.