Chapter III

Financial Management in the R2020 Period and Ritsumeikan University Tuition/Finance Policies for AY 2023 and Beyond

In R2020, under the goals of learner-centered education and comprehensive learner support, we developed the basic conditions and infrastructure for the qualitative enhancement of teaching and learning and the advancement of globalization. Informed by the achievements of R2020, in order to undertake further initiatives to raise educational quality and reliably implement the R2030 challenge design that was formulated with the post-COVID era in mind, we need to maintain sound financial health and balance going forward.

Japan’s private universities are subject to a twofold structural disparity: a low level of public funding by international standards and a gap in funding levels between national and private universities. Japan has one of the lowest levels of public higher education funding of all OECD member countries. Private university ordinary expense subsidies allocated by the national government now make up less than 10% of private university expenditure on ordinary personnel and operating expenses. (The Act on Subsidies for Private Schools that governs these subsidies was passed by parliament with an additional resolution that the rate would be maintained at 50%. In practice, it peaked at just 29.5% in 1980 and has been declining ever since, but this is the first time since the law was passed in 1971 that the rate has fallen below 10%.)

As a result, private universities have a financial structure that involves using student fees (revenue from tuition and fees) as the main source of funds to cover essential education and research expenses such as personnel costs and scholarships, at the same time as accumulating reserve funds for use in future replacement and upgrading of facilities and the like, to enable perpetual operation of academic activities and the university as a whole. Student fees are an indispensable source of funding for private universities, and the financial foundations provided student fee revenue are what make it possible for private universities to assure the quality of education and research and achieve ongoing developments and improvements.

While taking into account contextual factors such as household finances, the wider economic climate in society, and conditions at other universities, Ritsumeikan University positions its student fee levels and policies at the nexus of Academy finances and the qualitative and quantitative conditions of education, as expressed in the principles of “education corresponding with the burden of tuition” and “sense of learning and growth proportionate to tuition.” In the Plenary Council, we hope to promote deeper understanding of the current conditions and challenges in the Academy’s financial management, and discuss how the academic initiatives being implemented and developed with primary support of tuition fee revenue are contributing to the learning and growth of students at all levels, and how they are connected with the creation of a university that is attractive to people who strive to learn and grow on an ongoing basis.

Under the vision for the university set out in R2030, it will be more important than ever to acknowledge that the ongoing pursuit of higher educational quality, and the financial durability that underpins it, both leads to improvement of present-day educational conditions for students currently enrolled, and realizes and guarantees enhanced value for the university as an alma mater or mothership: a place where students, after graduation or completion of their degrees, and in some cases after gaining some career experience, may return for further learning or pursuit of graduate studies.