A Theoretical Study of Relation between High Schools and Universities -from the Curricular Perspective-

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At first we propose a new framework in order to make it possible to compare secondary and higher education in the world. Using this framework, we classified the Japanese secondary educational system as universal preparatory and the German as mass preparatory, and higher education in both countries as mass-type. The difference between these two countries is that Japan has a universal-mass model and Germany a mass-mass model. Because Japan had a mass-mass model as Germany fifty years ago, We can compare two systems rather easily.One of the most important suggestive points resulting from our comparison is as follows.From the result of the questionnaires which German researchers at Hochschul-Informations-System made we can conclude that there are big discrepancies between what graduates learned at universities and what the society wants them to learn. The curricula of Japanese universities are discipline-oriented as that of the German counterpart. But most of the graduates from universities go into not the graduate schools but the vocational world. Discipline-centered curriculum at university level must be revised to the holistic curriculum in order that graduates can learn what they need when entering into the vocational world. If both the curriculum of high schools and that of universities become holistic, then the relationship between both sides will become better and better.