Center for National University Finance and Management

わが国の医学論文数の動向を知るためにトムソン・ロイター社学術文献情報データベースおよびU. S. National Library of MedicineのPubMedを用いて分析した.わが国の臨床医学および基礎的医学の論文数は,主要国の増加に対し2000年頃から停滞あるいは低下して国際シェアが急激に低下し,相対被引用度も停滞していた.臨床医学および基礎的医学とも地方国立大学での低下が著しく,両者は正の相関を示した.国立大学法人化,大学予算削減,新医師臨床研修に起因する若手医師の流動化等の外的負荷に対応困難な地方国立大学の人的研究インフラ(研究者数や研究時間)が弱体化したことが主因と推測する.

As in a number of other countries, Japanese higher education institutions have faced pressure to reduce costs and respond to ‘market pressures’. This has included proposals by the national government to introduce competition, ‘agencify’ or corporatize universities and give management autonomy for universities in a hope that this will improve efficiency. The proposals however, are considered not a linear development but a radical change, because they go beyond an organizational reform as agencification that has been already adopted into some public services in 2001. Consequently, this paper analyses why this new policy change has suddenly happened and examines whether the new framework will be able to improve performance through enhancing autonomy. Investigating the process, we show that the corporatization of national universities has been progressed as the rhetoric for enhancing university autonomy and excellence, while the reality has shifted into a public sector reform as downsizing under the fiscal stress and the government control on performance might be much stronger.