The dean of the Faculty of Education
Tateo Hashimoto |
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I enjoyed the cherry blossoms in a different mood this year. This is because the establishment of Nagasaki University was changed in a big way this April. That is, Nagasaki University is not a national university any more as it was. It should be called formally National University Corporation, Nagasaki University. The change of the name might not make sense to you. It is very hard to explain what was greatly changed to the students, because you have little to do with this change directly.
To put it plainly, it is a change from a government enterprise to a semi-private one. Therefore the workers in the university are no more government employees. They are corporate employees. Though the university was operated by only people’s tax, it is now operated by both the tax and the money the university earns. The money earned by the university includes tuition, fees for entrance examination, medical fees in the university hospital and expenses paid by private companies that work together with the university. The total amount comes to tens of billions of yen. As you know, the university is a huge business enterprise. However, running the enterprise needs twice as much money. The necessary expense is to be covered by tax. Now you may ask what the earned money was used for. It used to go directly to the government purse and the government paid each university its management fees. In other words, after paying the money to the government at first each university used to be paid back the necessary sum of money by the government, but now the university keeps the earned money, and asks the government to cover any financial shortfalls. Then some of you may think that there is nothing changed.
That is not true. There is a big difference in the background of the time between the former arrangement and the latter one. When the necessary expenses were allowed, the government approved them to some extent. On the other hand, under the latter condition where money is paid to universities by the government to cover the shortfall, a problem is the financial difficulties of the government owing to the sluggish Japanese economy. Therefore the question always arises why the earned money is not sufficient enough to cover the expenses. So the government investigates the circumstances of activities within the university, examining whether there is unnecessary expenses or whether all the members of the stuff are striving for the same goal. This is called University Evaluation and Nagasaki University should take it the same as other universities. Then an evaluation inside the university will also be carried out. It may follow that they sort out profitable faculties which can enhance the university’s prestige from unprofitable ones. Some faculties would be worried because they include the field of education or research which can not yield immediate results.
Is the Faculty of Education profitable or unprofitable? It is unprofitable. In the field that educates people, we can not obtain an instant effect. In addition, we can not be rewarded by society because we educate people. However, education is an essential issue at any time. We are very proud of being engaged in that field. As the circumstances of the university are rapidly changing as mentioned above, our anxiety is increasing. However, we will educate you more enthusiastically than ever with the confidence and the pride of teaching young people who are to create our future society. We will make all possible efforts for the students, so that the society may say, “You are a graduate from the Faculty of Education at Nagasaki University. You did not study there for nothing.”
Now let me give my congratulations to you. We will train you to be a professional. I hope you will study hard with confidence, and also hope senior students to show a good example to the freshmen. We will make an effort together to develop the magnificent tradition of our university. I will report what is going on in the university, and will update the website, which you can access at any time.
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