Student numbers decline fuels merger talks

Nagoya University and Gifu University say they will consider merging their operations amid a fall in the student population to create the potential first national university operator in Japan to run multiple schools, reports Japan Today.

The two national universities in central Japan aim to raise the efficiency of their administrative operations such as those of their finance divisions through the merger to address increasing competition, officials at the two universities said. The two universities will begin discussions as early as late April and the operation integration could be completed by 2019 at the earliest.

They will maintain the names of the two universities and have no plan to change their locations, while they will call on other national universities in the Tokai region, such as Mie University, to join their merger in the future. The new entity could become the fifth-biggest national university operator by subsidies from the government after those running the University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, Tohoku University and Osaka University, according to data from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
Full report on the Japan Today site