It would be true to say that we will always live in a world of scarce economic resources. It is therefore imperative to rationally and efficiently allocate the scarce resources. Belonging to a national university, some constituents of CNU have false beliefs that we deserve affluent government subsidy. How can we say equity when private universities argue that they do not get the same support from the central government while paying the same rate of education taxes? We don’t have valid reasons to ask for more subsidies from the government than private universities. We are not entitled to continuous financial support from the government while we witness many symptoms of severe moral hazards. Moral hazard problems occur since our compensations are alienated from performance. We know, for certain, that student enrollments are falling gradually to such an extent that it is hard to support financial requirements for the university education. If we lack competitiveness as a higher education provider, should we blame the central government for ill-planned education policy and ask for more subsidies?

     We must find ways to self-contain ourselves. More specifically, we should reform the fundamental systems of university management. We should adopt performance evaluation systems and a corresponding reward and discipline system for each constituent of the university.  Compensation and promotion should be linked to performance as well as to seniority. We should set our mission statement and education policy clearly. We should evaluate ourselves to find out what our strengths are and what our drawbacks are. We should foster what we can do well and we should desert what we cannot do well. A general university does not necessarily mean that we should have all the major areas of disciplines in the form of departments or colleges. We have too many academic departments and colleges. We also have too many administrators and staff members. We need to streamline redundant organizations and administrative functions.

    Furthermore, as a core university in the region, we should get both mental and financial support from the local community. In order to get support from the local community, we should actively seek opinions from the local people regarding what they want from us. We do not stand alone physically in this region. So far, we have imitated prestigious universities in setting our long-range or short-term educational policies without considering the unique characteristics of local community. We should confer with the local community when we determine major educational policies. This policy will ensure our longevity as a regional public university.

    We should also positively study changes in central education policies. The Ministry of Education and Human Resources is currently planning to transform the national universities into educational entities, which can self-support themselves in the long run. Without strong competitiveness, we may witness ourselves weakening our position seriously when we do not adequately prepare for the self-containment. We must decide whether we will remain as a general university or a semi-general university with core departments and colleges only. We must find ways how we can nurture talented students, secure distinguished educators and researchers, develop source technologies and finally, help business sectors thrive in the region by supplying talented graduates and technology support. For example, in setting the curricular, we should actively seek their opinions so that we produce students that the employers want.

We should also overhaul some wasteful systems like the direct president and dean election system. We should ensure long-term tenure while helping them assume leadership effectively. We need to give deans authority to hire, assess and compensate professors while making them accountable for performance. We should eliminate the adverse cultures of collectivism from our university system. Collectivism tolerates non-linear logic, in that people can be inconsistent in their behavior from time to time. Academic ties and regional ties should not dominate our daily lives. Rationality, consistency, equity, efficiency and effectiveness should dominate our values instead.

     Also needed is to establish independent profit or cost centers where each department or college is held responsible for its own successes or failures. In the long run, only the most fitted survives. For example, we still keep departments with virtually no students or few students. Because of this, we incur costs of maintaining the departments without corresponding tuition income. This inefficiency comes from the complex characteristics of national university system since economic criterion is not fully used in allocating government subsidies. Maintaining uneconomical units will necessitate inefficient allocation of resources. Efficient allocation of scarce economic resources will mean future prosperity for the related parties and welfare improvement of society as a whole.

    To improve the efficient allocation of resources, the education policy-making bodies should give greater autonomy to university administrators. They should ease direct regulations on major policy-setting behavior of individual universities including admission policies, administration and tuition setting processes.

 [Editorial]