Doctoral Programme
Mission
The goals of this graduate school is to (a) cultivate people who will be able to adapt to the arrival of a new knowledge-oriented society and take leadership roles in the international community and (b) contribute to the recovery and revitalisation of the economy.
The doctoral programme is particularly designed to cultivate leaders with extraordinary expertise, creativity, and personal character who are working in the real world characterised by dramatic globalisation.
Curriculum
This is a research-oriented graduate school that enhances the awareness of problems being faced in real-life social and corporate settings and strives to address those problems from an academic perspective. Various systems have been developed to support graduate students’ research.
1. Lectures given by experts active in their industries or government sectors
In addition to its full-time professors, the graduate school invites experts active in their industries or government sectors to give lectures.
2. Research guidance by multiple academic advisors
With society becoming internationalized and increasingly complex, many of the issues and research topics being studied and chosen by graduate students are likewise growing more complex and crossing the lines of different disciplines. To adapt to this changing reality, the graduate school assigns both a lead academic advisor and assistant academic advisor to each student. Students in the doctoral program pursue interdisciplinary, multifaceted research while receiving guidance from a group of three academic advisors: one lead academic advisor and two assistant academic advisors. This group is made up of one or more full-time professors who hold doctoral degrees and one or more guest instructors active in industry or government. The graduate school has an educational system that enables its graduate students to conduct their own research independently while maintaining close communication with these instructors.
3. Weekday night and Saturday classes
In consideration of the study constraints of businesspeople with tight schedules, the graduate school holds classes and offers research guidance on weekday nights and on Saturdays (daytime and evenings).
4. Guidance through research projects
Students participate in research projects in the second year of the doctoral program. Research projects are interactive, jointly conducted with guest instructors and full-time professors. Interaction with guest instructors, who are experts on the front lines of their fields, offers rare opportunities for intellectual stimulation.
5. Diverse dissertation instruction formats suited to the student’s research hours
To enable graduate students to maintain a balance between their working lives and student lives, some advisors are occasionally available to provide research guidance on weekends. Personalized guidance is given on a one-on-one basis, but some professors arrange joint seminars with multiple advisors or periodically hold research meetings with larger groups. These seminars and meetings promote interaction between graduate students and alumni or other guest speakers and provide a venue for students to develop their networks through their research activities.