Type: NSF/Tokyo Report:   Tara & Nara:  Two Innovations in the Organization of University Research in Japan  
Date: 3/10/98
Replaces: None

The National Science Foundation's offices in Tokyo and in Paris periodically report on developments abroad that are related to the Foundation's mission. These documents present facts for the use of NSF program managers and policy makers; they are not statements of NSF policy.

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The following report was prepared by Dr. William A. Blanpied, Senior International Analyst in the Division of International Programs at the National Science Foundation.  Dr. Blanpied visited Japan from October 14 – December 6, 1997 as a Visiting Research Fellow (short-term) under the sponsorship of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).  Professor Shinichi Yamamoto of the University of Tsukuba, Japan served as host scientist for Dr. Blanpied.  Dr. Blanpied may be reached via email at: wblanpie@nsf.gov.

TARA and Nara: Two Innovations in the Organization of University Research in Japan

Japan’s Science and Technology Basic Plan, adopted by the Government of Japan on July 2, 1996, comprises ambitious and far-reaching provisions to streamline the country’s research and development (R&D) system to address the demands of the new century.  The Basic Plan responds to the Science and Technology Basic Law that was enacted by the Diet in November 1995. One of its important goals is to integrate Japan’s somewhat marginalized academic research sector more closely into the national research system.

Of course it is much too early to determine the extent to which this or any of the Basic Plan’s other objectives will be successfully implemented.  Well before the Basic Plan was adopted, however, several imaginative projects in the organization of academic research and advanced education in Japan were developed to address very similar objectives.  Examination of the current status of these initiatives could provide clues to the ultimate effectiveness of the Basic Plan itself.  One such initiative is TARA (the Tsukuba Advanced Research Alliance), a center created within an existing university that was itself created less than 30 years ago.  TARA styles itself as “an experimental organization which is testing the new system for the promotion and production of new technology”.  Another is Nara or, more properly, the Nara Institute for Science and Technology, a new university created in part with a view to determining whether it too might serve as a model to be replicated elsewhere in the country.

TARA.  

Objectives.  The Tsukuba Advanced Research Alliance (TARA) is the brainchild of Nobel Laureate Leo Esaki, who was elected President of Tsukuba University in 1992.  TARA was established on the university campus in 1994 as a center to conduct research on problems of potential interest to industry.  Its stated objectives are:

1.	to promote the most advanced interdisciplinary scientific research;

2.	to originate basic research; and

3.	to return university research results to society in the form of new industry technologies.

The statement of objectives goes on to note that:

New technology develops from basic research.  The research activity residing in the university can stimulate and promote the necessary basic research.  For this new mission, the university must develop a new research system.  TARA is the experimental organization which is testing the new system for the promotion and production of new technology.

Cooperation and Competition.  Unlike most other Japanese academic research centers TARA, as its name suggests, emphasizes cooperative research – or alliances - involving Tsukuba university faculty and graduate students, faculty from other universities, and researchers from the industrial and government sectors.  An in-house Liaison and Research Management unit actively promotes such alliances, providing assistance to Tsukuba university faculty (many of whom have little experience in making effective industrial contacts) in locating suitable partners.

The competitive atmosphere at TARA is unique in Japan.  The institution is organized around six broad research areas, or “aspects”: three in the biological and environmental sciences, two in materials science, and one in information science.  A professor from one of the university’s science faculties coordinates research within each aspect.  These coordinators hold seven-year joint appointments at TARA, renewable subject to the results of performance evaluations.  Projects within each of the seven aspects are conducted by interdisciplinary, inter-institutional groups led by other university faculty members whose projects are selected on the basis of a competitive, peer reviewed process.  Initial project support is provided for three years, with the possibility of extension for an additional four years, depending on the results of external evaluation.

In exchange for subjecting themselves to this unique discipline of competition and external evaluation, successful group leaders, their students, and their partners conduct research with state of the art apparatus in two attractive new buildings – one of them completed in 1995, the other due for completion this year.  Perhaps they also gain satisfaction from the knowledge that the TARA experiment could be in the vanguard of Japanese research in the 21st century.  Yet there are serious questions that have yet to be addressed.  Although the TARA concept is intriguing, it is too early to judge its effectiveness in providing a basis for new technologies.  Evaluation of the first set of projects, selected in 1996, will not be completed for another year and, of course, commercial exploitation of potentially useful research results will probably not occur for several years.  

TARA as a Pilot?  Even if ultimately judged effective, it may be difficult to replicate the TARA concept elsewhere in Japan.  Tsukuba University itself, founded only in 1973, is a considerably more flexible institution than most of the older, more prestigious national universities such as Tokyo and Kyoto.  Set in the heart of Tsukuba Science City an hour north of Tokyo by bus, the university is in close proximity to many high-technology companies which provide a ready source of potential partners for TARA’s research projects.  The large number of applied research institutes in Tsukuba, supported by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), provide another source of talent.  Few other universities have such ready access to the government and industrial sectors.  On the other hand, although Tsukuba is the most prominent and well developed of Japan’s science cities, several others have been created during the past 10 to 20 yearsfor example, in the Kansai region, which embraces the cities of Kyoto, Kobe and Osaka, and around Fukuoka, the largest city on the southernmost island of Kyushu.  If, as President Esaki hopes, TARA succeeds in showing some promise in meeting its objectives, perhaps universities in these and other parts of the country might try to adapt the model to their own circumstances.

Nara.  

The Advanced Study Concept.  The Nara Institute for Science and Technology (NAIST), established in 1991, is one of two national universities in Japan devoted exclusively to research and graduate education.  The other is the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), located in Tatsunokuchi in Ishikawa Prefecture, which was created in 1990.  A third advanced study institute located near Yokahama and devoted to the social sciences is due to admit its first students during the fall of 1998.

These advanced study institutes are unique in Japan for at least two reasons, in addition to their exclusive focus on graduate education.  First their policies, including their broad research direction, are established and overseen by external boards of distinguished scientists from academia and industry.  One result of this external oversight arrangement is that, in principle, faculty enjoys somewhat less autonomy in selecting and pursuing their research topics.  Still, as in all Japanese universities the full professors, designated as group leaders, wield significant authority within their respective disciplinary faculties.  In exchange for some theoretical loss of autonomy on the part of their faculties, the advanced study institutes are subject to fewer of the regulations imposed on other national universities by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture (Monbusho).  These regulations, in the opinion of many observers, constitute a significant barrier to the potential of universities to contribute effectively to the national research effort.

A second significant distinction between the advanced study institutes and other national universities lies in the limited number of disciplines encompassed.  NAIST has only three faculties: the Graduate School of Information Science which was established in 1992 and admitted its first students in 1993; the Graduate School of Biological Sciences which was also established in 1992 but did not admit its first students until 1994; and the Graduate School of Materials Sciences which was established in 1996 and will admit its first students in the fall of 1998.  Each of the two former faculties has 20 full professors and 20 associate professors; each admits 125 students per year to its graduate programs.  Most students are admitted to the Masters program.  However, the number of Ph.D. candidates is increasing, and several post-doctoral appointments are also becoming available.  The Graduate School of Materials Sciences will initially limit the number of students admitted to 90.  

Admission to all schools is based on a half-hour oral interview, following prescreening based on undergraduate transcripts and written recommendations.  NAIST has instituted a relatively unique accelerated degree program that permits qualified students to obtain their Masters degrees in less than the canonical two years required elsewhere and their Ph.D.s in less than three additional years.  This flexibility is designed in part to attract mature, mid-career students who already have some working experience.

Facilities.  The fact that there are so few disciplines represented at NAIST permits a concentration of financial resources conspicuously absent at other national universities.  Each of its three graduate faculties is housed in its own large and attractive new building; each is well equipped with state of the art apparatus.  Faculty point with considerable pride, bordering on awe, to the bright, spacious laboratories available to graduate students, in addition to the large cubicles shared by only two graduate students and two PCsconditions which contrast sharply with the cramped and aging facilities at many national universities.

NAIST, as a new institution, was designed from the outset to take advantage of modern information technologies.  One of the first units established was a central information technology center which provides an institute-wide information environment based on ultra-high-speed network facilities and distributed computer technologies.  A wide-area network provides connections to external academic networks in Japan and abroad and also provides various types of educational activities related to information technology.  NAIST’s digital library is a source of particular pride.  Currently, 120 monthly or quarterly editions of scientific journals are being placed on the system on a regular basis, with additional copyright permissions being sought to increase the steady state number to 150.  Since it opened in April 1996, the library has digitized 250,000 pages of scientific publications and has recently begun to digitize video productions as well.  Access to the full contents of the library is available to graduate students and faculty, as well as to local industrial subscribers and selected faculty at other national universities, on a 24-hour basis.  Access to titles and abstracts is available worldwide [http://dlw3.aist-nara.ac.jp].  

NAIST as a Pilot?  One refreshing characteristic of NAIST, at least to a US observer, is the absence of inbreeding on its faculty.  In the older prestigious national universities, it is customary for the most promising undergraduates who opt for advanced study in science to pursue graduate work at the same institution, then become full-fledged though junior members of research groups headed by the same professor who supervised their dissertation research.  Ultimately a few of these academic aspirants manage to attain the rank of full professor, with the right to organize their own research groups.  As one result of this system, mobility among Japanese university scientists (let alone mobility from academia to industry, or vice-versa) is rare.  As an example, a Kyoto University administrator estimates that 80 percent of the faculty were originally undergraduate and/or graduate students at that institution!

Since NAIST admitted its first students in 1993, none of its faculty could yet be its own graduates.  Rather, faculty have been recruited from universities in other parts of the country.  Many were no doubt induced to accept positions both because of the splendid research facilities available and for the opportunity to participate in an exciting new experiment in Japanese academic science.  But the very novelty of the institution may be a detriment to its effectiveness.  Many, perhaps most Japanese students aspiring to academic research careers are still more comfortable about seeking admission to the graduate schools at universities where they pursued their undergraduate studies, most of which are far more prestigious institutions than NAIST or JAIST.  Whether these well endowed and imaginative advanced study institutes can successfully surmount this deep-seated cultural barrier remains to be seen.