Established in 2004, Akita International University (AIU) has, in just over 10 years, staked its place as one of the premier public universities in Japan. Based in Akita Prefecture, in the Tohoku region of Japan, the university aims to create self-actuating future global leaders and, to that end, has adopted an International Liberal Arts philosophy and determined to conduct all of its classes in English.
AIU, moreover, is one of the 37 institutions that were selected for the Top Global University Project, also known as the “Super Global University (SGU) Project” — an initiative to enhance globalization in the country’s universities that is sponsored by the government of Japan. In a wide-ranging and candid interview, Bilateral magazine caught up with AIU’s charismatic president Norihiko Suzuki, DBA, to find out more about the university and its trailblazing role in the 21st century.
AIU is not only modeled on the U.S. liberal arts system; the university also teaches its courses in English. Can you tell us why this strategy was chosen?
Well, as you may know, the Japanese business and education systems have traditionally been rather closed to the rest of the world. In terms of business, companies here often employed a seniority system and, even though they claim to have changed, when looking at the situation from the outside, they appear not to have done so. Companies here also tend to promote a rigid, lifetime employment system. The same can be said of the Japanese education system, in general. It has been rather closed and has adopted a rigid system of specialization for undergraduates — what we called "senmongaku buseido." Students take university entrance exams for a specific faculty or college within the university: an economics student studies economics, a physics student focuses on physics and so on. So, from the beginning, students are separated and placed into specializations. This business and educational system has been successful in the past as the business and employment structures matched those of the universities; they were both specialized and they marched hand-in-hand in a Japanese framework.
However, the world is globalizing and changing quickly. This means that we need to develop global leaders capable of international interaction in a business world that is quite different from the systems we faced in the past. That is why at AIU we teach in English, for example, which is a global language. That is the starting point of our education program. Content-wise, we offer an “International Liberal Arts” Curriculum. What we mean by this is that we provide a “learning-centered,” rather than a “teaching-centered,” environment where students are encouraged to develop themselves. This is important because in a globalized society it is not always the nation state that you have to rely on, but rather yourself as an individual. Nationality is, of course, important, but what you rely on most is the ability to represent yourself via person-to-person relationships. This means that students have to develop themselves as individuals, and cross-cultural human relations — with English as the key language— becomes the unit of analysis and communications.
Can you elaborate on how the International Liberal Arts system enhances the student’s capacity to be a self-representing, global citizen?
The Liberal Arts system works through interactive communication in the classroom. As I may have suggested already, in the typical Japanese classroom, the instructor stands in front of the students, he speaks or instructs, while the students sit and take notes—there is no interactive communication. The student then memorizes what is said, takes the exam, is graded, and then graduates. This is one way of doing things, but it does not allow the possibility to train oneself or to speak face to face with a counterpart.
In Liberal Arts classes, which are usually small in size, students are encouraged to communicate during lessons — that is the core of the system. In addition, the system promotes globalization. For this, we have partnered with other institutions — 173 of them in 46 countries and regions — in programs that allow students around their third year to study abroad for one year. We reciprocate this by inviting the same number of students from foreign universities into AIU for a year. This is, in part, how the International Liberal Arts system helps us develop globally capable graduates.
AIU is among the 37 universities in the “Super Global Universities (SGU)” project sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Can you tell us what this means for the University?
In our proposal for the SGU program, we said we would ignite AIU like a rocket. By this I mean that we have already been globalizing: for the last 10 years we have offered all courses in English, sent students for a year overseas, and housed freshmen alongside international students in our dormitory. So, we set our sights on doing something new and reaching higher goals. This means we have to launch a rocket with four booster engines.
The first booster engine is to revise the dormitory education system. We will have students live together based on common study interests or intended career paths. The second is benchmarking our curriculum against those of our partner institutions— including the College of William and Mary, Dickinson College and Georgetown University—with the implication that if our curriculum level or content falls below those of our partner institutions, we will have to raise our own level to match theirs. The third booster engine is the “English Village and Teachers’ Seminar” project. We will send our students, who are well trained in communicating and in taking courses in English, to a high school, grade school or junior high to teach a subject, any subject, in English. That is one of the aspects of this English Village and Teachers’ Seminar. So our faculty goes to these schools to demonstrate for their teachers how to teach in English, and the lesson itself is conducted in English—it will be an English immersion course. The fourth engine of the re-launch is to raise our university to the global standard, and this is related to the benchmarking idea. You see, we have been accepting students from overseas and sending ours abroad, and this requires smooth and seamless curriculum compatibility. So we are always revising our teaching standards to meet global ones. The SGU project is an important part of that effort.
As you mentioned, AIU has a number of partner colleges around the world. Can you tell us how these collaborations are benefiting your students?
Well, the International Project Based Learning (PBL) may be a good example. Under PBL, we have a special agreement with Oregon State University. In this framework, each university selects a group of students who then conduct joint research projects or participative learning projects together, spending time at both universities. For instance, we conducted a joint research project on marginal communities. By marginal community I mean local communities whose populations are decreasing due to a demographic shift and a lack of industry.
In both Akita Prefecture and the state of Oregon, we have several such communities, although each has its own specific background. We placed students in those communities and let them conduct their own research, including interviews and communication with local people. They then reached their conclusions and published their recommendations to the local administration. We have been doing this kind of joint research project under the PBL initiative not only with Oregon State University but also with the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Utah. We intend to expand this to more universities in other countries because we believe that our students, and the communities they conduct research in, benefit greatly from this system.
Can you summarize for our readers AIU’s general philosophy and approach to higher education?
As I may have already said, we intend to be a modern and student-centered model of educating, training and creating leaders for the 21st century, rather than a traditional and subject-centered institution. In a sense, we are trying to create a diverse and adaptive, natural forest ("zokihayashi") of students that can thrive among the drastic changes that are occurring in the world today, rather than creating a stark and artificial man-made plantation ("jinkoshorin"). While Japan was renowned for exporting products and finance in the past, in a globalized world, our greatest export ought to be our people — and this requires graduates who are prepared to become global leaders.
© Japan Today
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