子どものころ、「末は博士か大臣か」という言葉を耳にしたものです。当時、科学の担い手である博士（PhD）への期待とあこがれが、広く社会に共有されていたように思います。

　第一生命のアンケートによると、平成の30年間に「大人になったらなりたいもの」のトップは男の子が「野球選手」「サッカー選手」が常連で、女の子は「食べ物屋さん」ですが、2017年には「学者・博士」が15年ぶりに男の子で第1位となりました。 日本人の相次ぐノーベル賞受賞も追い風となって、子どもたちの博士人気は今も根強いようです。

　ところが2017年3月に英国の科学誌ネイチャーに「日本の科学研究がこの10年間で失速している」というリポートが掲載され、私は大きな衝撃を受けました。自然科学系の主な学術雑誌に掲載された日本の研究者による論文数は、2012年からの5年間で8%あまりも減少したというのです。その背景としてネイチャー誌は、日本の研究予算の伸び悩みとともに、若手研究者の厳しい雇用環境などを挙げています。

　研究の将来を担う理工系のPhD取得者数と経済規模（GDP）は相関があることが知られています。ところが、日本のPhD取得者は他の先進国はもとより新興国に比べても少なく、低い水準にとどまっています。今後18歳人口が減っていく中で、さらに安心して大学院に進めるような環境整備が欠かせません。

　大学としてもインターンシップを密にし、企業から博士課程の学生を支援してもらう仕組みづくりを進めたいと考えています。同時に、4％前後にとどまっている企業従業員に占めるPhDの比率を高めてもらう必要があると考えます。数値目標が求められている女性の採用・登用のように、企業や官庁がPhD取得者を一定割合で採用すれば、PhDを目指す学生はもっと増えてくると思います。大学と企業が日本の未来のためにタッグを組んでいくことが求められているのです。

　研究費の面では、大学が自由に使える運営費交付金が削られる一方で、結果を重視する競争的資金の比重が高まっていることはご承知の通りです。しかし、まだ芽も出ていないような分野に対して耕さず、種もまかなかったら、50年後、100年後に全く新しい領域が生まれてきません。海外の後塵を拝するだけになってしまいます。

　iPS細胞でノーベル生理学・医学賞を受賞した山中伸弥博士の研究は、100万円の科研費からスタートしたと直接伺いました。長期の視点に立って研究を自由にやれる環境も、産学連携の成果と共に求められているのではないか、そのバランスをうまく取ることが必要だと考えています。

In my childhood, I often heard “Will you become a doctor or a Cabinet Minister when you grow up?” I seem to remember that in those days hopes and admiration regarding PhD holders were very prevalent among many members of Japanese society.

During the 30 years of the Heisei era, a survey conducted by the Dai-ichi Life Insurance Company asked school children “What would you like to be when you grow up.” The most common response amongst boys remains “baseball player” or “football player,” while “running some kind of shops serving food, snacks or sweets” has always been top of the list amongst girls. However, in the equivalent survey of 2017 “Academic or PhD holder” ranked in 1st place among school boys for the first time in 15 years. The fact that the Nobel Prize has been awarded to one Japanese scholar after another in recent years seems to have provided a boost to the age-old popularity of the PhD.

Be that as it may, I was shocked to read in the March 2017 issue of the scientific journal ‘Nature’, that scientific research in Japan has lost its momentum in the last decade. Between 2012 and 2017, the number of papers published by Japanese researchers in the major academic journals which specialize in the natural sciences fell by about 8%. The journal ‘Nature’ provided some background information as to why this decline has occurred, citing the stagnant research funding budget at higher education institutions in Japan as well as the harsh job market environment for young researchers seeking tenured positions at universities.

The correlation between the number of PhD holders from the discipline of science and engineering (a key research area for the future) and the scale of the economy, i.e. Gross Domestic Product, is well known. Compared with the number of PhD holders in other advanced countries and emerging countries, Japan has fewer PhD holders, and this number has remained at a low level in recent years. With the declining population of men and women in the 18-year-old young adult age bracket, it is necessary to develop an environment in which graduates are able to enter post-graduate programs with a greater sense of security.

I am contemplating to make internships more content-rich so that it will lead to establishing a mechanism, whereby private companies offer support to PhD students. At the same time, I feel it is necessary to ask private companies to increase the percentage of PhD holders among their employees from the flat rate of about 4% of recent years. Companies should use the same kind of numerical target system for the number of their employees with PhDs as they do for the recruitment or employment of women. If private companies and governmental agencies were to start employing PhD holders at a constant rate, this would also mean more students enrolling in university PhD programs. Hence, in the current environment, universities and private companies in Japan need to collaborate with each other for the future of the country.

As we all know, as far as research funding is concerned, we have seen a rise in the percentage of competitive funds placing value on research outcomes, whilst universities in Japan have been experiencing cutbacks in their Management Expenses Grants. If Japan does not realize the potential of investing in new research fields now, we cannot expect to see any new research disciplines emerging in 50 or 100 years from now. If we do not take any measures now, Japan will merely end up falling behind other overseas countries.

Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, who was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of iPS Cells, told me that he started his research on iPS Cells with a funding grant of one million yen. As well as valuing research outcomes from industry-university collaboration, perhaps Japan also needs to provide an environment where researchers can freely pursue their research project(s) with a long-term perspective. I think what is needed here is to strike a good balance between the two issues of sustaining the environment and productive collaboration with industry.