Comparative analysis of research and development environment in the universities of Japan and the USA

Summary form only given. When the decline of Japan´s ability to compete is studied, the inferiority of Japanese universities is often listed as a factor. Especially compared with US universities, Japanese universities are evaluated as a very weak point of Japan´s innovation system that is very competitive in some reports. In this study, we compared Japanese universities with US universities from viewpoints of innovation power. We selected two elements; the number of doctoral candidates and the level of government funding for R&D. These levels, research universities I (RI) and research universities II (RII) in Carnegie Classification, are discussed. We evaluated all major Japanese universities using Carnegie Classification. As a result, we found the following points: there is a large number of research universities in the United States; the difference in the amount of acquired research expense between the universities is much bigger in the US than that in Japan; there is a difference between RI and RII universities in Japan; and the ratio of graduate school students to undergraduate students is overwhelmingly higher in the US than it in Japan