Globally, private universities enrol 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 book offers a detailed historical, sociological, and ethnographic analysis of this important, but largely under-studied, category of private universities as family business. 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 business which 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.

In Japan, almost 80% of university students attend private institutions, up to 40% of which are family businesses. This book offers a detailed historical, sociological, and ethnographic analysis of this important category of private university, and examines how institutions have negotiated a period of major demographic decline since the 1990s.

Although an entirely unknown part of higher education worldwide, there are literally hundreds of universities that are owned/managed by families around the world. These institutions are an important subset of private universities—the fastest growing segment of higher education worldwide. Family-owned or managed higher education institutions (FOMHEI) are concentrated in developing and emerging economies, but also exist in Europe and North America. This book is the first to shed light on these institutions—there is currently no other source on this topic. Who owns a university? Who is in charge of its management and leadership? How are decisions made? The answers to these key questions would normally be governments or non-profit boards of trustees, or recently, for-profit corporations. There is another category of post-secondary institutions that has emerged in the past half-century challenging the time-honored paradigm of university ownership. Largely unknown, as well as undocumented, is the phenomenon of family-owned or managed higher education institutions. In Asia and Latin America, for example, FOMHEIs have come to comprise a significant segment of a number of higher education systems, as seen in the cases of Thailand, South Korea, India, Brazil and Colombia. We have identified FOMHEIs on all continents—ranging from well-regarded comprehensive universities and top-level specialized institutions to marginal schools. They exist both in the non-profit and for-profit sectors.

The single best book on higher education as a global phenomenon. Over the past half-century, globalization has had a profound impact on postsecondary education. The twin forces of mass higher education and the global knowledge economy have driven an unprecedented transformation. These fundamental changes have pulled in opposite directions: one pushes for wider access and accompanying challenges of quality, the other toward exclusive, “world class” research-oriented universities. In Global Perspectives on Higher Education, renowned higher education scholar Philip G. Altbach offers a wide-ranging perspective on the implications of these key forces and explores how they influence academe everywhere. Altbach begins with a discussion of the global trends that increasingly affect higher education, including the implications of mass enrollments, the logic of mass higher education systems around the world, and specific challenges facing Brazil, Russia, India, and China. He considers the numerous implications of globalization, including the worldwide use of the English language, university cross-border initiatives, the role of research universities in developing countries, the impact of the West on Asian universities, and the expansion of private higher education. Provocative and wide-ranging, Global Perspectives on Higher Education considers how the international exchange of ideas, students, and scholars has fundamentally altered higher education.

The changes in Japanese higher education were anticipated as far back as the 1990s, when studies began of changes in the UK higher education systems. By 1999 the "Arima Plan," which turned universities into autonomous corporations was announced and the growth of new international universities began.

Examines topics including geography, city and rural living, art and music, historic events, holidays, famous cities and historic personalities of Japan.