BY Minako KAMIO

In August, the Association of National Universities published the results of their survey about the entrance examination center test, which covered 95 Japanese national universities. It shows that 80 percent of them will introduce a new policy for the entrance examination in 2004 which increases the number of subjects from five to seven in five study fields of study.

The reason for this policy change is the problem of studentsﾕ decline in basic knowledge which is supposed to be acquired during high school. Since the system of the entrance examination center test was changed to the present "a la carte form," that allows each national university to decide the number of subjects on its own, more and more universities have cut the number of the examination subjects in order to decrease the burden of examinees and keep on gathering as many applicants as possible. This tendency has caused high school studentsﾕ study range to become narrow, and in some cases, students entering medical schools have not studied biology in high school. This report, however, doesnﾕt show what standard their judgment on declining academic achievement is based on.

However, there is a contradiction between the above mentioned policy of increasing examination subjects which national universities are going to implement and "flexible education" in high school, which has proceeded to cut study hours and standards of the material under the guidance of the Ministry of Education, Sports, Science and Technology. If such the new university policy comes into effect, it will increase the burden on examinees because high school students studying under the flexible education system have fewer classes to study those required subjects for the entrance examination. Under such circumstances, the flexible education system will not work normally: High schools will have to adjust by lowering the level of teaching materials, and the examinees will have to compensate the gap between their studies in class and their studies for the entrance examination.

The new the five-day week system is one of the factors for flexible education. While many examinees already go to cram schools today, if this examination system is introduced, more of them are sure to go to cram schools at the expense of their free time.

To avoid such a situation where examinees do not study essential subjects in specific fields, universities had better make public the list of required subjects needed for majors or minors in universities, so that they can study them while in high school. However, if we consider that most high school students have not decided their majors or minors before entering university, we hope that they will have a chance to have a broad education in their high school days.

Finally, those of us now studying at college are the first wave of the entrance examination center test generation with a deficiency in our academic achievements. It means our practical and fundamental academic knowledge is less than former generations. How should we react to this? At this point, we could use this problem as a chance to examine our academic achievements and aim to become experts with common sense as well as have a fundamental academic knowledge for the future.