Page 15 - Japanese Growth and Education: 演講人：Motohisa Kaneko教授

Japan’s Development and Education - Past, Present and Future -c115

children from lower income families.

Government

At the early stage after the War, the utmost goal for the government in the
1950s was to accomplish the postwar educational reform. However, through the

1950s, demands for upper secondary and higher education started to grow. The
government initially took a restraint policy – maintaining the quality of schools
which had been badly hurt during the war had to be given the priority.

As the popular demand for secondary and higher education grew, the
political pressures to allow expansion mounted, and the Ministry of Education
eventually gave in. However, the government lacked enough financial

resources to provide for sufficient upper secondary schools and higher education
institutions to satisfy the demand. Instead, it took the policy to allow the private
sector to expand, either through increasing the enrollment of existing institutions

or through allowing new ones to open. In other words, frustrated demands were
satisfied by the private sector, which was financed mainly by contribution from
the family.

On the other hand, the government diverted the limited financial resources
on the national institutions, which accommodated less than 20 percent of
undergraduates. Particularly, departments of engineering and natural sciences

were expanded substantially throughout the 1960s, securing the supply of
technical engineers necessitatd for development of fledging machinery and
chemical industries. It should be also noted that the tuition at the national

universities was kept at a much lower level. This in effect created a strong
incentive for the talented high school graduates to advance to engineering and
natural sciences courses at national universities.