Last November, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology released a "Plan to Reform National Universities," which, among other things, set a target of making at least 10 Japanese universities rank among the world's top 100.
In the World University Rankings of the Times Higher Education, published in a supplement to the Times of London, schools of higher education are ranked globally on the basis of their weighted average scores in five categories on a scale of 100. Three principal categories — teaching (learning environment), research (volume, income and reputation) and citations of papers (research influence) — are given a weight of 30 percent each.
The remaining two — international diversity and industry-university collaboration — are weighted at 7.5 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively.