Effectiveness of the University of the Air of Japan

Abstract

The University of the Air of Japan (UAJ) was founded with the idea of creating a university that is open to everybody in the country. In order to realize this objective, the university will expand its operation so it can provide education nationwide. However, the nationwide expansion will require many resources to be created and maintained. It is necessary to assess the effects of the education of UAJ to justify the expansion of its operation.

This study aims at quantitative evaluation of the monetary and nonmonetary effects of the education offered by UAJ. In order to find the educational effects, questionnaires were sent to the UAJ graduates, and the responses were analyzed. Monetary effects were expressed by human capital value calculated with the data on the annual earnings of the graduates. When the UAJ graduates were compared with general workers that have the same educational background as that of the UAJ graduates before the enrollment, the graduates of UAJ have more human capital value than the general workers. However, the human capital value of the UAJ graduates who had not received a college degree before the enrollment is smaller than that of the graduates of conventional universities. In respect of nonmonetary effects, the UAJ is most likely to have impacts that are different from those of conventional universities because of the varied characteristics of the UAJ students. Therefore, we set the categories of the students' expectations from the gathered data, and attempt to determine if the university is meeting the needs of the students. As a result, it was made clear that UAJ education does meet students' expectations of cultivation and convenient study conditions, but does not satisfy their expectations of occupational advancement.