With the recent innovative developments in science and technology, and with the diversification and upgrading strategies as well as the globalization of the economy, and the advent of a ubiquitous society in our midst, there are great expectations for graduate schools to train IT professionals who meet the increasing needs of the rapidly changing globalized world that we are in.

The technical aspects of IT education essentially integrate concepts from two specialized fields, i.e., information and management. In Japan, however, owing to the vertically-integrated structure of academic institutions and disciplines, it has been beyond the scope of post-graduate educational institutions to cultivate skills and train highly-qualified professionals.

As Japan's first professional school specializing in IT (launched in April 2004), KCGI demonstrates its ability to overcome difficulties that existing research graduate schools have been struggling with to foster top IT professionals equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to run operations as chief information officers (CIO).

It is especially significant that global developments are taking place in the IT field. Currently, the United States is leading the training of IT technologists and some American universities have shown successful outcomes. By establishing global educational networks with such highly-qualified American professional schools as Rochester Institute of Technology and Columbia University, KCGI has laid out a system teaching the tenets of advanced education responding to the needs of the rapidly-changing IT field.

KCGI is operated by the experienced staff at Kyoto Computer Gakuin (KCG). KCG, the first private computer educational institution founded in 1963, has turned out capable human resources who meet the needs of professional experts wanted by the industry for more than 40 years. With KCG's strong backup and long history of achievements, KCGI as Japan's first IT professional school aims to add a new dimension to computing education by fostering leaders in the IT and business fields.

School Philosophy

The philosophy of university education, which advocates "academic freedom and independence" as opposed to "power of the state," stems from Western Europe in the Middle Ages.

This philosophy brought fresh air into Japan in the Meiji Era, and remained influential within Japanese universities even after World War II.

However, the fact that this principle, observed as a doctrine by most of the six hundred "general universities" (except for "research universities") today, may have created barriers preventing these Japanese universities from fostering capable human resources for the business sector.

As a result of the prolonged recession, there has been a rise in the number of bankruptcies among small and medium-sized enterprises. Since the economic community in fact has a serious shortage of manpower, it is time for educational circles to meet these needs. We consider education more important than anything else for the prosperity of society and human happiness. This school is based on the founding principle of "fostering information technology (IT) experts and researchers with skills to respond to the needs of our society, and the capability to practice advanced IT skills and lead the next generation." By providing these IT professionals who have more advanced skills and an in-depth knowledge of the IT fields of this ubiquitous computing age, we hope to contribute to the development of an ultra-advanced and highly-practical information-based society and to enhance productivity and economic growth of Japan.

An Enterprise-oriented Perspective

In a broadband and ubiquitous society, not only are computers absolutely imperative, but also the increasing need to be connected serves as an important factor in the establishment of social networks and the like. "Information" is the basis of all the social activities: encompassing politics, the economy, industries, the sciences technology, human life and so on.

In the present time, it is difficult to facilitate a new business if we simply rely too much on individual advanced technology, without comprehensive viewpoints of social and human aspects, and academic knowledge. It is expected that more sophisticated concepts will eventually replace the solution business of the early IT age. In response to a new trend towards the ubiquitous age, the new field of study called "informatics" evolved. Our graduate college specializes in the "informatics" field, with more emphasis on business applications of technology rather than on theoretical informatics research.

Needless to say, our focus on business practices emphasizes the importance of interpreting society's needs from a "business-oriented" perspective. We believe in the revolutionary idea against the current trend in education, which underlines the conventional "flow of scientific technology and research from universities and graduate schools to business industries." Our area of specialization is in applied information technology which is based upon a new "business-oriented" standpoint. And, our goal is to foster advanced solution engineers, business engineers and CIOs, etc., who can respond to the needs of new businesses in the ubiquitous society.

Theories and Technologies for Professionals

At the present day, the fact that there is a great mismatch between the skills of college graduates in general and the human resources needs of many industries may be attributed to the lack of practice-oriented viewpoints in learning environments at the universities.

Among some six hundred universities and colleges throughout Japan, we are convinced that about one percent of these universities ought to be academic (research-oriented) institutions and the rest ought to be pragmatic (practice-oriented) institutions. At the practice-oriented universities, educators aim to establish curriculums based on pragmatic perspectives, and to give lectures on theories for applications while fostering capable engineers and scientists with practical skills for the industries. Yet, almost all the universities in Japan have adopted academism, whereas almost no practice-oriented institutions existed. Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that the weakness of the Japanese universities lies in the abuse of "academic freedom and independence."

Our graduate college plays a significant role in filling the "gap" between universities and industry.On this account, our educational philosophy states that our graduate school is grounded on a value system that puts emphasis on pragmatism and not in academism, whose goal is set on the "knowledge of the truth." �@The theory of pragmatism, originating from American culture, did not arise from armchair speculation, but rather traces its roots in the culmination of the pioneer spirit, the struggle for a better life and the democratic processes of nation-building. "In the beginning was the deed." Goethe can be paraphrased in a more modern context as "Action comes first" or "Practice prevails." The theory of pragmatism postulates that pragmatism conflicts with academism. It denies that there is knowledge of truth for truth's own sake: it claims that knowledge is the means and tools of real life, and practice through action enables us to bring about practical effects in our lives. It can be analyzed that it is the power of pragmatism which has led to computer literacy, the rapid growth in IT literacy, and even the outstanding uniqueness of developed technologies for IT related fields in the United States. As leading professionals specialize in applied information technology, we attach great importance to the facts mentioned above. Under these assumptions, we aim to foster professionals with highly-advanced practical skills and to enable them to respond to the current and future business and technical needs of our society

"Pioneer Spirit" and "Innovative Vision" in Educational Development

Specialized knowledge required for personnel resources from the perspectives of industry segments does not always conform to the contents of courses offered at the existing universities. Although these universities had sought permission to render seamless relationships between current disciplines, they had to proceed with difficulty due to the insurmountable barriers between the disciplines at each department.

By contrast, the wide-ranging concept of "information" encompasses various areas and disciplines whether it is in the humanities or in the pure sciences. IT takes over those borders that delineated a discipline from sub-disciplines; thus, allowing for a more integrated framework and holistic understanding of "specialization" or "expertise" with practical applications in the Information Age. However, since most universities still ascribe to the pre-IT age of designing various courses and fields of specialization into clear cut separate entities, this dampens the possibility of producing graduates who can respond to the changing needs of our society in the Information Age. As such, we are hereon faced with the task of reorganizing the existing framework used in universities for designing courses not as stand-alone entities but according to "research categories," and from a perspective of "information".

From the response of various fields to the pervasive growth of information, the new academic discipline called "informatics" came into existence, but at the present time, it is hard to conclude that "informatics," serving as the fundamental research deduced from the system building of the new academic field, functions as the specialized field established with its own framework based on the needs of our society.

Regarding the establishment of the new discipline, in order for the fields of specialization required in the IT age to match those at the existing universities, we restructure various fields of specialization based on the "information" perspective: we establish a new specialized discipline based on a new curriculum emphasizing industry perspectives.

Business engineers and project managers, who are most sought for the economic reconstruction by the IT industry, are professionals specializing in at least the two disciplines. The most urgent task is to establish an area of specialization of the new age capable of integrating material from previously disparate fields, and to turn out capable human resources who can respond to the needs of the industry.

At a time in the past, there used to be days of "quality competition" of our products in the industrialized society. Today, it is the time for "competition of innovation." We are responsible for responding to a rapid change of the society and creating a new concept. In bottom-up dynamics, foreseeing the needs of the society is a critical pre-condition for supremacy in national and global competitions.

In the present situation, the primary importance for education is that we rapidly develop and realize the domains of education in response to the needs of our society, regardless of our stereotypes of traditional academic disciplines. As an educational institution born from the rapid growth of information, the main tenets of our educational development are an "innovative vision" and a "pioneer spirit."

Fostering Originality and Creativity-Oriented Education

Ever since the Meiji Era, the Japanese educational system has been characterized by "acquisition and assimilation of knowledge." This educational system displayed effectiveness in the industrialized society, but does not work out in the information-driven society, where human brains developed in stereotyped patterns do not function well as present-day "active brains." There used to be a cardinal rule for those who have newly become full members of society to "learn a lot from our ancestors." However, this learning process no longer trumps creativity. Today, trends of our times and changes of our society ask us to digitize and store the foot prints of our ancestors, and re-create our own traces. There is an urgent need for educational innovation so that we may evolve from "acquisition and assimilation of knowledge" to "fostering of creativity."

Most commercial transactions in an industrial society buy and sell "products;" most commercial transactions in an information-driven society buy and sell "knowledge." That is, our business society has evolved into a "solutions business" in which creativity adds value to services and products. In this "age of knowledge-based value," there is no doubt that we pay more serious attention to critical thinking and creativity.

Tracing back through history to the first human civilizations, we see that natural skepticism has always led to discovery of truth through imagination and logic, and that necessity is always the mother of invention. Beautiful superior arts are born through imagination coupled with aesthetic sensibility.

Although science, technology, and the arts seem to be heterogeneous, they share a common root in terms of creative activities. We believe that emphasis on roots leads up to the development of creativity. With respect to learning, we should not specialize in "acquisition of knowledge": but we should reconsider "spontaneous detection of problems and effective solution for the problems" as one of our strategies for fostering creativity, as has been emphasized in education in the United States. We intend to scrap the educational processes of the past and build a process focusing on "fostering of creativity."

Even though our purpose is to foster capable human resources who can contribute to the information business and our emphasis is on the practice-driven education, we do not disregard academic learning of theoretical concepts. In this time of the rapid change and progress of information technology, what are of importance are not simple techniques, but people with "talented technical capabilities," who can weather the hardships in another twenty or thirty years, and with sensible understandings and flexible application skills. We thus intend to establish an "authenticity-oriented education" for fostering talented persons through instructions of academic theories of "universals" and cultivation of the scientific thinking mind.

We recognize true justification for the existence of "universities": with such a perspective, our graduate college by nature resides in the traditional genealogy of universities.

Human-Resources Development for IT Promotion

In order for us to utilize IT in a positive manner, force through reforms and to revive ourselves, let us point out that business engineers and project managers are most sought by the industry who are technical professionals specializing in at least two disciplines.

For now, we have focused on the needs of the IT industry, determined the disciplinary and established the essential curriculum. Literally speaking, we believe that we have developed an "industry-oriented" education, and that we are capable of fostering these human resources with the characteristics of innovative vision and pioneer spirit sought by the IT industry.

Currently, medium and small-sized enterprises are faced with a serious situation. Unlike large companies, the medium and small-sized companies cannot afford to develop their own educational systems, and spend time and the high cost for fostering human resources. Due to the shortage of manpower, it is assumed that the medium and small-sized companies have lagged behind in the extreme in management reorganization through the introduction of IT. Considering that a wave of bankruptcies and weakening of those medium and small-sized companies in the past few years was the result of their inability to make a transition toward "digital society," it is reasonable to assume that the "shortage of manpower" is the root of all tragedies.

It has been reported that less than a few percentage of the medium and small-sized enterprises throughout Japan ensure business engineers and experts. Probably, there are at least hundreds of thousand of shortfalls in human resources. Even if we could achieve the world's best infrastructure through fiber optics and other networking technologies, there is no doubt that Japan cannot become the world's best IT nation without solving the "staffing shortage."

The revival of Japanese economies relies on the revitalization of the medium and small-sized companies, and thus the social significance of our graduate school is immense, as fostering human resources plays a key role in the progress of IT.

"From Kyoto" -Transmission of Japanese Culture-

At the present time, while business circles in Japan are struggling during the big rush of business depression, there are groups of business enterprises located in Kyoto that are producing high profits and seizing their share of the worldwide market. Those business enterprises are successful owing to the innovative culture of Kyoto and the authentic traditions of companies in Kyoto for seeking superiority in quality, together with insight into the needs of the society. In addition, it is well known that Kyoto originated venture companies, and produced a number of Nobel Prize recipients. Kyoto has the ability to foster creativity both in the field of business and in learning environments.

Over the past thousand years, Kyoto has played a central role in Japanese culture. We are convinced that out school evolve greatly through gaining a profit out of our good location, Kyoto, and inheriting energy peculiar to the Kyoto area, and continue to transmit information about Japanese culture toward the rest of the world.