Message from the President

Aiming to foster creative and practical technical engineers

Colleges of technology (KOSEN) were first founded in 1962, and since then, about 310,000 students have graduated during the 46 years so far. The Institute of National Colleges of Technology, Japan (INCT), which organizes 55 KOSEN including the newly established Okinawa KOSEN, was established in April 2004 as a single legal entity, and it has become a massive-scale institution which has approximately 50,000 students and 6,300 academic / administrative staff.

The mission of the KOSEN, which were established in response to a strong demand from industry, is to foster creative and practical technical engineers. In order to accomplish this aim, the KOSEN conduct practical and professional engineering education based on a five-year integrated system with general learning and specialized learning organized systematically.

About 60% of students find employment after completing the five-year associate degree course , and 40% of them go on to a two-year advanced course, or transfer to a university and receive a bachelor’s degree. Some of them continue their study in postgraduate schools. I am convinced that the variety of career courses after graduation creates many possibilities for their careers, and leads to the production of excellent talents such as practical and creative engineers, entrepreneurs, managers, and researchers, who can be inventive and have problem-solving skills. Receiving extremely high acclaim in personnel training from industry, KOSEN are conducting positive activities in relation to technological innovation from the local community and technology with global competitiveness, and cooperating with industry and government.

“They are widely admired internationally, not only for the quality of the high-level vocational training they offer, but also for their degree of responsiveness to the needs of Japanese industry, especially the manufacturing sector. [Text omitted] We, like countless other overseas evaluators, were impressed by their management, quality and innovation.” These are remarks of the OECD research committee that investigated the situation of the higher education of Japan in 2006. They expressed great admiration about the education of KOSEN in their report.

A big issue of KOSEN in the future is to cultivate global engineers corresponding to the globalization of industry and the higher education. Therefore, each KOSEN is making efforts to enhance substantial activities such as English teaching, overseas internship programs, international exchange of students and staff, and the technical cooperation. Various strategies have been discussed and carried out especially in attempting to expand the acceptance of international students under the plan of Japanese Government aiming at accepting 300,000 international students for the entire educational facility by 2020.

I believe KOSEN, which train practical and creative engineers under close cooperation with industry, are able to contribute to students from developing countries and to those countries themselves. KOSEN have played an important role in the economic and technology-based national development in Japan. I am hoping that KOSEN will grow and contribute further as "KOSEN in the world" in the future, and I would appreciate your great support.