After being covered by a policy paper of the Central Council for Education, curriculum coordinators seem to attract attention of many in Japan's higher education sector. Mentioning university provosts and other specialists in the United States, the policy paper describes curriculum coordinators as highly professional administrative staff in the headquarters who support the leaderships ; it also assumes that curriculum coordinator can be and should be trained though staff development. The actual management culture in American universities, however, has been said to be rather decentralized and financially stand-alone, according to previous studies. Our empirical study based on job descriptions demonstrates the following results. Firstly, curriculum coordinators with greater discretionary power are often expected to have a Master's Degree or even a Ph.D., professional experience as a researcher, and academic expertise ; staff development, therefore, may have little effect to equip these experience or capacities. Secondly, curriculum coordinators are often arranged to coordinate educational programs in the lower branches, such as school or centers, rather than to support the decision-making by the leaderships. More attention should paid to the diversity of curriculum coordinators when discussing how to train the specialists.