Government legislation ministry rules academy professor experience counts as education career

The government legislation ministry said Thursday that service as a military professor at a service academy counts as the education career required of candidates for education superintendent, answering a question from the education ministry.

The law requires anyone seeking to become a superintendent to have at least three years of education experience, defined as work as a teacher at institutions such as those set up under other laws, provided they are recognized as equivalent to schools under the higher education act, the ministry said. The education ministry asked whether the academies and their military professors fit that definition.

The legislation ministry found that they do. The service academies are under the armed forces, but the act establishing them recognizes graduates as holding bachelor's degrees, making them education institutions established under another law and standing on the same footing as the universities named in the higher education act. Military professors also count as teachers: the law governing the academies applies the same qualification standards to instructors responsible for undergraduate and master's-degree coursework as it does to university faculty, and the personnel directive defines a military professor as a commissioned or civilian officer appointed as a professor, associate professor or assistant professor after meeting those standards.