The Ministry of Education, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) in Japan announced that it will introduce a major change in the grant allocation system for national universities. After 2016/2017, public grants will be allocated based on 3 different types of universities: 1) world top-ranking teaching and research universities, 2) world class teaching and research universities which excel in specific subject areas, 3) universities which contribute to local revitalisation. 86 national universities in Japan are now being required to select which type they would like to be categorised as. This will be one of the biggest changes for the Japanese higher education sector since the 2000s.

The initial impetus for such a change came from the industrial sector, which required grant allocation to be more competitive than the current system in which allocation is made based on the size of the university.

Under the new system, the performance of each university will be evaluated each year and universities with exceptional results will be prioritised in the allocation of grants. MEXT is yet to confirm the evaluation criteria, but for the “world top ranking” and “world class” universities, citation, international student mobility, the number of international academic staff as well as the level of globalisation will be included in the criteria.

In Japan, there has been a series of special funding for university internationalisation including the Global 30 and Top Global Universities projects. The internationalisation agenda will now fully be a part of grant allocation for those universities that chose to be categorised in the relevant groups and this will have extensive impact on the international strategy of Japanese national universities.