The president of Keio University urged Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's administration in a recent interview not to cut the education budget. </PARAGRAPH>
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<TD><FONT SIZE='1'><B>True to his school: Atsushi Seike, president of Keio University, is interviewed at the campus in Minato Ward, Tokyo, on Nov. 13.
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<PARAGRAPH>'The Democratic Party of Japan, in its pre-election platform, pledged that politics should value people above physical projects, and that it would rework the budget and focus the use of taxpayers' money on child-rearing and education, among others,' Atsushi Seike, said.</PARAGRAPH>
<PARAGRAPH>In an interview with The Japan Times, Seike, who became president of one of the country's oldest and most prestigious private universities in May, also said there is a large discrepancy in the amount of subsidies that national universities receive compared with their private counterparts. He argued that this gap should be closed because private universities serve the vast majority of Japanese students.</PARAGRAPH>
<PARAGRAPH>Seike did not elaborate on the public funding gap, but government data show that private universities account for 80 percent of the total and that 75 percent of all university students go to private schools.</PARAGRAPH>
<PARAGRAPH>The fiscal 2009 budget earmarks about ¥320 billion for subsidies to private universities through the education ministry. That is only one-fourth as much as national universities receive. Government funding amounts to just 10 percent of the current expenditures at private universities, on average.</PARAGRAPH>
<PARAGRAPH>Seike also pointed out that Japan's public spending on education lags far behind that of other developed countries. </PARAGRAPH>
<PARAGRAPH>According to statistics from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Japan had the second-lowest public spending on education in 2006 among 28 OECD countries at 3.3 percent of gross domestic product. The OECD average was 4.9 percent.</PARAGRAPH>
<PARAGRAPH>Alarmed by the recommendations by the administration's budget review panel that many science and technology projects be scrapped or scaled back, Seike joined the heads of eight leading national and private universities in issuing an emergency statement Nov. 24 seeking more funding for science and technology.</PARAGRAPH>
<PARAGRAPH>A Keio graduate and prominent labor economist, Seike, 55, has some advice for Hatoyama's team on dealing with the current economic woes, especially its stubbornly high unemployment, which remains near July's all-time high of 5.7 percent.</PARAGRAPH>
<PARAGRAPH>'Today, one in every 20 people is jobless. It makes sense that the government –
resort to emergency short-term measures to address the critical employment situation, The question is how to create jobs," he said.
Employment springs from production, Seike said, stressing that no business hires for charity.
"They employ people to produce goods and services. I mean that employment policy should be closely related to industrial policy, and more importantly, to the formation of the country's longer-term economic growth strategy."
Like it or not, the economy will have to rely on overseas markets for growth, Seike said, suggesting two broad approaches to job creation.