Kyosuke Nagata, president of the University of Tsukuba, was recently re-elected to a third term as head of the Japan Association of National Universities, which comprises 86 national universities across the country.

In a recent interview with The Asahi Shimbun, Nagata shared his thoughts on the current financial plight facing national, public and private universities as they struggle with skyrocketing electricity costs and commodity prices in general.

He also spoke about his leadership ambitions in the coming years.

Born in 1953, Nagata, a molecular biologist, completed a doctoral program with the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences. He became president of the University of Tsukuba in 2013.

Nagata has headed JANU since 2019, and his third term runs through June 2025.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

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Question: JANU in June took the unusual step of submitting an emergency request to the education ministry. Please explain the background to this.

Nagata: Universities are facing a very hard time with soaring utility costs. It was predicted that all of Japan’s national universities will be paying a total of 20 billion yen ($144 million) more for electricity in the last fiscal year. The corresponding figure will likely be even greater this fiscal year.

The increase amounts to several billion yen a year for certain universities. Some of them have cut down on their research and other expenses to weather the crisis.

Q: Some students have given up on going abroad to study due to rising travel costs. What do you say to this?

A: Many students find it difficult to study abroad at their own expense over the long term. If fewer Japanese are studying overseas, that is probably not just because of the “inward mindset” of students. Financial problems likely matter more to them.

The government’s Council for the Creation of Future Education coincidentally presented a plan to drastically increase the number of students who go abroad to study. Achieving this goal would require increasing both the amounts, and the number of recipients, of scholarships provided by the Japan Student Services Organization and other entities.

Q: JANU’s emergency request also called for measures to address the surge in electronic journal subscription fees and article publication charges. Could you elaborate?

A: Some universities have canceled their subscriptions. That has generated a disparity, among universities, in access to published articles in journals. In addition, quite a few researchers have given up publishing academic papers. This is a serious problem that could undermine Japan’s research capabilities.

In Germany and France, universities have united on a national level to negotiate with publishers for price reductions. But in Japan, universities are talking to publishers individually, which gives them scant bargaining power.

We are, therefore, arguing there should be an arrangement on a national level for engaging in negotiations.

JAPAN’S WEAK PRESENCE

Q: Do you agree that Japan needs a framework that can organize universities of all types, including national, public and private ones?

A: Yes, I do.

It’s not just about electronic journals. I also acutely realized the need for such a group while we were recently discussing “research integrity,” which is about preventing leaks of research results and technologies.

University associations of leading nations around the world, including the United States and Britain, issued a joint statement on the matter in 2021.

But Japan was not invited. JANU issued a solo statement on the issue only a year later.

I was recently told by officials of the International Association of Universities, which organizes universities and higher education groups across the world, that Japan’s presence is weak.

I’m hoping a framework can be created that would allow all universities in Japan to discuss such things together. It would also be useful for dealing with domestic issues that are of concern to universities, no matter whether they are national, public or private, such as the problem of falling birthrates.

Q: The government has a mechanism in place to vary the amount of subsidies to cover the operating costs of national universities in accordance with what those institutions have achieved against a set of common indicators. This includes the amount of external funding they have acquired. JANU has lobbied without success to abolish the mechanism. What are your thoughts on this?

A: The subsidies mostly cover fundamental spending of a fixed nature, such as personnel expenses. Universities have less and less money at their disposal. That goes against the way the government is encouraging universities to exhibit their own distinctive features.

Q: The government’s Priority Policy Program for Realizing the Digital Society is pushing to add greater campus digitization, including the use of the Individual Number Card system, to the list of the indicators. What are your thoughts on this?

A: To promote digitization is one thing, and to spread the use of the Individual Number Card, more commonly known as the My Number Card, is quite another.

Most universities are digitizing to improve their work efficiency, among other reasons. But they will each have a different stance on the wisdom of using the My Number Card system, which is plagued by so many problems.

Punishing the universities that don’t use the My Number Card system by cutting government subsidies could end up delaying digitization.

MORE SUBSIDIES TO PROVINCIAL UNIVERSITIES

Q: A shortlist of candidate first-year beneficiaries from the government’s new University Endowment Fund has been narrowed down to only three: the University of Tokyo, Kyoto University and Tohoku University. These are the same, top three recipients of government subsidies intended to help cover the operating costs of national universities. Some may suspect it was a fixed race. What is your view?

A: Some may take it that way.

What the three universities said in their respective proposals remains unknown. I just hope their proposals will help to strengthen Japan’s overall research capabilities, by conducting joint studies with other universities, for example.

Q: The government has started naming recipients of its Package for Comprehensive Promotion of Research Universities with a Regional Core and Distinctive Characteristics, which is directed for the most part at provincial universities. Will you comment?

A: I appreciate the way that 200 billion yen was allocated to the package in a fiscal 2022 supplementary budget.

I believe, however, that even more should be allocated, considering the balance with the way the University Endowment Fund will be distributing a total of up to 300 billion yen to a handful of universities.

(This article is based on an interview by Kohei Kano and Senior Staff Writer Fumio Masutani.)