Research on the present situation and future development of external degree systems in the U.S.A.and U.K.

本研究旨在了解美国和英国对外学位授予的制度、现状和制度视角。主要集中在终身学习社会的发展和成熟的背景下，它的历史发展和今天的运动。在1995-98财政年度的科研资助期间，我们进行了三种形式的调查，即对外学位院校单项问卷调查、对外学位院校目录调查和文献研究。我们认为，这可能是第一次对美国各种形式的外部学位制度和英国如此大规模的学分积累与转换制度进行全面调查。研究结果表明，除了外部度要求的定义、操作和变化外，该系统还需要建立评估基础设施。这种基础设施包括标准化考试的学分，在大学之外学习的学分，如PONSI项目或经验学习的评估。另一个发现是，随着信息技术的迅速发展和（或）成人学习需求的扩大，该制度可能受到社会变革的影响。

This research was designed to gain the knowledge on the system, present situation and fixture perspective of external degree granting in United States and United Kingdom. It mainly focused its historical development and the movement nowadays within the context of development and maturation of life-long learning society. During the period of research aid, fiscal years 1995-98, we made three kinds of survey, questionnaire inquiry to individual institution with external degree program, survey of catalogs of these institutions and literature research. We believe that this may be the first comprehensive survey of external degree systems with various forms in U.S.and the credit accumulation and transfer system in U.K.with this large scale in Japan.As results of this research, besides the definition, operation and variation of requirement of external degree, it came to light that the system needs infrastructure of assessment to be established. This infrastructure includes credit by standardized examination, credit by learning outside university as PONSI program or evaluation of experience learning. Another finding is that the system may be influenced by the social transformation with rapid development of information technology and/or enlargement of needs of adult learning.