NEWS

Hideki Yamamoto, cofounder of the Dream Project School initiative, visited APU in late July to give a special lecture to APU faculty and staff. Yamamoto is the author of Sekai no Eriito ga ima Ichi Ban Hairitai Daigaku Mineruba (Minerva: the Desired School for the World’s Elite), which offered APU as an example of an international university. From 2015 to 2017, he was the Minerva Project’s regional outreach representative for Japan. Entitled “The Future of Higher Education,” Yamamoto dove in to the Minerva Schools’ concept and the importance of a global education.

Looking at the statistics, students around the world are not receiving an international education. Yamamoto mentioned that “only 2% of college students in the world study outside their home country,” and over 50% of those studying abroad go to Europe or North America. At the world’s top universities, international students comprise at most 17% of the population. A lack of global education both for students and the institution is a major problem considering the rapid globalization of the modern world.

Meeting the needs of society’s future requires not only international experience, but practical education. The lecture proposed that rather than learning through lectures, students must be engaged in active and experimental learning that facilitates practical learning through self-created ideas and solutions. Universities must also embrace IT, which is already essential in today’s society. IT also makes educating across borders much easier.

Recently, Japanese universities have gone to great lengths to recruit international students. The strategy is part of a broader, worldwide trend among universities to internationalize and meet the challenges of globalization. This lecture reaffirmed the importance of APU’s commitment to offer students, both international and domestic, a global and practical education.