大学のリカレント教育 : 先進事例からみた展望と課題

Despite the growing need for recurrent education and reskilling and the promise of universities in this area, the increase in the number of adult learners at universities is minimal. The study presents three hypotheses for the failure of universities to actively attract adult students, namely: (1) difficulty in identifying potential demand, (2) challenges in management systems, and (3) inactivity in determining the significance of their efforts. Furthermore, we focus on programs that are taking advanced approaches and examine how they overcome various bottlenecks.
(1) Potential demand was captured through collaborative creation with companies and past initiatives instead of through general market research. The program is driven by the strong desire and sense of mission of the program promoters, which exhibit flexibility in devising and modifying content and delivery methods. Moreover, all universities under study are well-known. However, they were enthusiastic and successful in their efforts to “sell” programs. (2) To solve the issue of management structure, several programs sought solutions by utilizing subsidiaries. (3) The objective of the efforts of the universities in recurrent education was not only financial but also industry–university collaboration, student recruitment and as a solution to internal university issues. Recurrent education was positioned as one of the solutions for complex and crucial internal issues.
Thus, only two types of recurrent programs in Japanese universities have been discussed in prior literature, namely, social contribution from the perspective of the social justice model and efforts to open universities to the wider public and the development of individual knowledge and skills using the human capital model. This study proposes a third model of recurrent education. The recent emergence of advanced cases has increased the possibility of a new model that targets individuals and corporations as a part of collaborative creation in the search for solutions to social problems.