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On May 16, 2018, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held the 7th meeting of the Council for Designing 100-Year Life Society at the Prime Minister’s Office.
 
At the meeting, a discussion took place on the follow-up of the university reforms and employment of the elderly.
 
Based on the discussion, the Prime Minister said,
“Today, we first discussed issues related to employment of the elderly. It is extremely important to create places to work for the elderly who are motivated to do so, both in terms of fulfilling their wishes and also raising Japan’s growth potential amid a declining population. For example, when I spoke with investors in New York last year, they asked me many questions about whether Japan can improve its growth potential while being faced with a declining population, indicating that they are placing great importance on that point. In response, I explained with confidence that going forward, we will transform Japanese society into one where women will become even more actively engaged, and where the abilities of the elderly will be utilized. I believe many trust what I said, and some have since started investing in Japan. Meanwhile, this is a national challenge that the public and private sectors must work together in unity on.  
 
In fact, in terms of physical age, people are younger than they used to be. They also maintain high intellectual ability despite their age. Hence, it is no longer a realistic assumption to uniformly regard all people aged 65 and above as being among the elderly. For example, someone introduced earlier that a 92-year-old has collected funds through crowdfunding. In Malaysia, a 92-year-old has just become Prime Minister. In a sense, when such people have opportunities to act upon their abilities, it will surely benefit their communities, their society, as well as their country. There is a tendency among companies that have experience hiring even one middle-aged-to-elderly person to more actively hire a second or even more such persons. For that reason, we will also advance a policy to promote the trial employment of the elderly.   
 
Furthermore, I believe that creating personnel evaluation and compensation systems that put an emphasis on performance will increase opportunities for the elderly to work, rather than systems based on seniority and equal benefits. Through such initiatives, we will develop the necessary conditions to facilitate continued employment beyond the age of 65 in the future. I would like Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare Kato to lead the relevant reviews.  
 
Secondly, regarding university reforms, based on the directions of consideration presented at the 5th meeting of the Council for Designing 100-Year Life Society, we received interim reports from Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Hayashi and Council member Sakakibara and further deepened discussion on the topic.
 
Based on today’s discussions, I intend to set out a clear direction in the basic concept and the Government’s Basic Policy (on Economic and Fiscal management and Reform) to be formulated soon on the relevant issues such as the further clarification of the roles and functions of each university, the improvement of the quality of education, the visualization of the skills that students acquire, its utilization in the companies’ employee selection activities, the improvement of universities’ management capabilities through external hires, and the development of an environment for universities’ collaboration and integration. I would like Minister Hayashi to lead the efforts to consolidate proposals.”