Message from the Rector

• Bachelor of Arts, Waseda University Master of Education, Master of Arts, Columbia University, USA
• Certified Educational Administrator, State of New York, USA
• Honorary Doctorate, Jeju National University (South Korea)
• Visiting Professor, Tianjin University of Science and Technology (China)
• Chairman, Kyoto Information Industry association (KIIA)
• Chairman, All Nippon Information Industry Association Federation (ANIA)
• Founder, Information Technology Federation of Japan (ITrenmei)
• Representative Director & Prime Vice Chairman, Information Technology Federation of Japan
• Board Member, Information Processing Society of Japan (IPS)
• Board Member, Japan Massive Open Online Education Promotion Council (JMOOC)
• Board Member, Nippon Applied Informatics Society (NAIS)
• Board Member, JAPAN Micro-Credentials Organization (JMICRO)
• Board Member, Japan Internet Governance Forum Supporting Organization
• Policy Advisory Committee Member, Jeju Free International City Development Center (JDC), a national public corporation under the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, South Korea
• Awards, Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Thailand (Twice); Ghana Minister of Culture Award
• Courses Taught: “Leadership Theory” and “Master Project 6”

Education at The Kyoto College of Graduate Studies for Informatics

The Kyoto College of Graduate Studies for Informatics (KCGI) is the first IT professional graduate school in Japan.Its parent organization is Kyoto Computer Gakuin (KCG), the first private computer education institution in Japan.KCG was established as a private school by Shigeo Hasegawa and Yasuko Hasegawa under their unique, forward-looking philosophy. Since its founding in 1963, KCG has been providing computer education for more than 60 years.During this time, many students entered KCG and completed their studies, including not only high school graduates but also graduates of four-year universities.At the time, graduate schools in Japan were primarily research-oriented. As a result, most university graduates who enrolled at KCG chose the school because they were looking for a higher education institution where they could acquire practical knowledge and skills directly applicable to their careers.Despite operating within Japan’s specialized training college system, KCG has also served as an institution providing further education for university graduates.In other words, KCG has also functioned as a kind of professional graduate school focused on practical, career-oriented education.

Building on this background and history, KCG established a joint program in 1998 with graduate programs at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in the United States, including Information Sciences and Technologies and Computer Science, and has since offered a practice-oriented professional graduate school curriculum.This collaboration between a Japanese vocational school and American graduate school programs was both the first of its kind in Japan and groundbreaking.

In one sense, it could be said that it was inevitable that we would embark on the establishment of an IT professional graduate school under the new Professional Graduate School system with staff from the Kyoto Computer Gakuin, which had made such achievements as those mentioned above, at its core. The Kyoto College of Graduate Studies for Informatics was established as Japan's first IT professional graduate school in April 2004, the first year of the new education system in Japan, with the endorsement and cooperation of Masao Horiba, founder and current chief adviser of Horiba, Ltd. and numerous other persons involved in the financial world, as well as many persons involved in education, including professors and researchers from the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Teachers College at Columbia University in the United States.

At its founding, KCGI established the following as its founding philosophy: “To develop advanced IT professionals with the practical skills and creativity to meet the needs of society, take responsibility for the present, and lead the next generation.”This program is based on a modified version of the Information Systems (IS) master's curriculum of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the oldest and largest international association of computer-related societies, and is designed to train engineers, especially CIOs, specializing in web business (e-business).KCGI’s mission and purpose are to respond rapidly to advances in information technology and related fields by providing education in the theories and applied technologies of disciplines such as science, engineering, and business management, thereby developing highly skilled professionals. By producing advanced IT professionals with sophisticated technical expertise, broad knowledge, and an international perspective to meet the increasingly advanced and diverse human resource needs of the IT society, KCGI aims to contribute to the realization of an advanced information society and to economic development.

Until then, there were virtually no undergraduate or graduate programs in Japan where students could study in depth the technologies and related fields required for web-based business (e-business).In traditional fields such as business administration and management engineering, as well as related areas of information science, these topics were addressed only in part through research and education.In other words, there was no firmly established, independent field of study dedicated to these areas.

What distinguishes KCGI is that we are not a "vertically divided single field" computer science graduate school, nor are we an informatics and mathematics graduate school as can be found in many university engineering departments in Japan. Although we may share many similarities with the above, we aim to be a world-class professional school as a different genre of IT professional graduate school in the broader sense of the idea and with a focus also on the cultivation of leadership abilities. In addition to the pedagogically based curriculum design and faculty composition, we have also introduced a Learner Oriented Instructional Design, an open horizontal division of labor system, and regular measurement of Learning Outcome. Such a way, we are working to enhance our educational system by taking in many elements and measures that were rarely seen in Japanese universities until then.

In addition, we focus on fostering international leaders by cultivating human resources with both IT skills and management skills who can demonstrate their abilities in Asia and other countries around the world.At KCGI, we have aimed to be the number one IT professional school in Asia since our establishment and we actively accept students from around the world and particular Asia.

In addition, against the backdrop of the recent international acclaim for Japanese content such as anime, the importance of the content industry is increasing. There is a huge amount of social needs in a wide variety of related fields.At KCGI, the curriculum is continuously reviewed and updated to ensure that students acquire broad knowledge of IT and can apply it in practice to succeed in their future careers, whether working for a company or starting their own business.Equipped with extensive knowledge and skills and a broad perspective, KCGI graduates are demonstrating their capabilities in a wide range of fields in Japan and around the world.

KCGI established a satellite campus in Sapporo and another in Tokyo were established in October 2012. Connected to the main school in Kyoto via an e-learning system, this makes it possible for students to receive cutting-edge IT professional education while studying at either satellite campus in Sapporo and Tokyo. Courses are taken in real time; in addition to being able to ask questions of professors directly via camera, these courses are recorded, and it is also possible to view courses stored on our servers from home. It is, so to speak, possible to go beyond the boundaries of space and time to receive a high-level professional education anywhere, anytime. In addition, KCGI has an extensive network through its own partnerships and exchanges with universities and other institutions in the United States, China, Korea, and other countries.Our partnerships with higher education institutions has exceeded 100.We will continue to actively develop educational projects while deepening our ties with our partner schools.The annual enrollment capacity, which was 80 students when KCGI was established (160 students in total), increased to 1,000 students per year from the 2025 academic year (a total capacity of 2,000 students in 2026), representing a 12.5-fold increase.In terms of capacity for information-related graduate schools, this school is one of the best.

Amidst the hectic changes of the day, we are steadily advancing and pushing forward with the training of high-level IT professionals based on our founding philosophy and our established mission and purpose. I eagerly await the entrance of ambitious students such as yourself.