Despite the ongoing stagnation in the economy and population decline, which threaten Japan with falling behind in the global scientific and technological race, the Land of the Rising Sun intends to remain among the world’s top three leaders by strengthening science at universities.
The Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge at the National Research University Higher School of Economics analyzed what measures will contribute to this and how scalable this Japanese experience is based on its key strategic and program documents in the field of science and technology.
Japan has been among the leading countries in terms of scientific and technological development for many years. It is third in the world1 in terms of domestic R&D expenditure (US$177 billion in PPP in 2021) and the number of researchers (704.5 thousand person-years in full-time equivalent in 2021), sixth in the number of scientific articles in international databases2 (107 thousand units in 2022) and first in the number of “triad” patent families3 (17.5 thousand units in 2020).
Despite the high technological level achieved, in terms of the dynamics of individual indicators, Japan noticeably lags behind other global leaders (the USA, China, South Korea, Germany). Thus, contrary to the global trend in the development of university science, in Japan over the past two decades, the volume of domestic R&D expenditure in the higher education sector has remained almost unchanged (while, for example, China and the Republic of Korea demonstrated its multiple growth, Fig. 1). Of particular concern to the Japanese government is the continued stagnation in the number of researchers employed in the higher education sector and in the number of postgraduate graduates who have received PhDs, despite significant growth in these figures in competitor countries.