Family-Run Universities in Japan: Sources of Inbuilt Resilience in the Face of Demographic Pressure, 1992-2030

Private universities enrol one in three of all higher education students globally, with almost 80% of all university students in Japan attending private institutions. This updated edition of Family-Run Universities in Japan offers a detailed analysis of this important category of private universities as family businesses, examining how they have navigated a period of demographic decline since the 1990s and their resilience. It argues that this resilience derives from the strengths of family businesses, which are often overlooked in conventional descriptions of higher education systems.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 06 April 2023
Publisher: Oxford University Press

Globally, private universities enroll one in three of all higher education students. In Japan, which has the second-largest higher education system in the world in terms of overall expenditure, almost 80% of all university students attend private institutions. According to some estimates, up to 40% of these institutions are family businesses in the sense that members of a single family have substantive ownership or control over their operation. This updated edition of Family-Run Universities in Japan offers a detailed historical, sociological, and ethnographic analysis of this important but largely under-studied category of private universities as family businesses. It examines how such universities in Japan have negotiated a period of major demographic decline since the 1990s: their experiments in restructuring and reform, the diverse experiences of those who worked and studied within them, and, above all, their unexpected resilience. It argues that this resilience derives from a number of inbuilt strengths of family businesses that are often overlooked in conventional descriptions of higher education systems and in predictions regarding the capacity of universities to cope with dramatic changes in their operating environment. This book offers a new perspective on recent changes in the Japanese higher education sector and contributes to an emerging literature on private higher education and family business across the world.

Weight: 422g
Dimension: 153 x 234 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780198879756