Curriculum Policy

Curriculum philosophy

The Graduate School, with the aim of achieving social development and solving public issues with increasing complexities in this era of globalization, intends to establish public policy studies as a comprehensive science that includes international perspectives as well as based on diverse collaboration and cooperation within Japan. The Graduate School aims to nurture public policy professionals (highly skilled professionals) with broad knowledge, keen insights, and high analytical and judgment capabilities to address the current challenges as the policies are becoming increasingly sophisticated and specialized.

Composition of the curriculum

The curriculum aims to enable the students understand the various aspects of governance*1. It is built in an interdisciplinary manner, and first of all, along with incorporating two core course fields—one comprising politics-, administration-, and policy-related subjects and another made up of management-, economic-, and finance-related subjects—as disciplines that make up public policy studies, it also includes abundant policy research courses to grasp and understand the concrete status of the subjects.
The Graduate School also offers multiple course models composed of subjects from these fields corresponding to the profession and problem awareness of the graduate students. Models of the subjects taught in Japanese are Course Model I Urban/Regional Politics, Course Model II Management of Local Government, Course Model III Formation of Public Affairs, Course Model N International Development and Cooperation, and Course Model V Consumer Policy and Development of Market. Subjects taught in English are the three areas of Public Policy, International Development Policy, Community Planning and Management. Further, in order to raise their practical problem-solving ability, the students are required to prepare research papers in Problem Finding/Research Method I & II and Writing Skills/Research Paper I & II, and grade evaluation is carried out based on rigorous examination upon their review.
<*1. Four Course Fields>
Field A: Core courses (Politics, Administration, Policy-related), Field B: Core courses (Management, Economics, Finance-related), Field C: Policy Research, Field D: Special Research

Features of the curriculum

The Graduate School covers all sorts of themes related to public issues and is a base that was formed by welcoming people who joined the university after gaining work experience and graduates aiming to build a career. It is a forum for learning where information exchange and interaction between people with abundant experience (including Graduate School of Governance Studies tenured staff, special teaching staff, visiting professors, guest professors, and part-time lecturers) gives rise to novel ideas that spread, develop, and flow through it. Here, even though our students “graduate,” many of them continue to work on their initiatives, which have delivered results. In particular, in “Governance Network,” “Urban Policy Forum,” and “Governance Forum with Everyone,” it serves as a setting for practice and research that links not just graduates but also graduates and current students, which is its best feature.