A workshop on the university preferences of high school students in Japan, given by Professor Masahiro Okamoto, Professor Emeritus and Special Advisor to the President, Kyushu University during the 2018 UBC conference.

The University of British Columbia, Canada, hosted the 2018 annual conference, attracting university leaders from around the world.

Reputation is playing an increasing role in Japanese higher education; 46% of the scores in THE Japan University Rankings include reputation elements. Meanwhile, many Japanese high school students find it hard to decide where to undertake university study, and the current system encourages subject specialization very late in the process. With global problems increasingly requiring interdisciplinary solutions, Kyushu University has recently launched a new undergraduate school that blends humanities and social sciences with the natural sciences. Professor Okamoto will introduce the current educational backgrounds and problems of high schools and undergraduate schools in Japan, and discuss what attracts high school students and the role of universities for global society.

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2018 UBC Conference Presentation: Workshop 4 - University Reputation: What Attracts High School Students - Masahiro Okamoto

Professor Okamoto is Professor Emeritus and Special Advisor to the President at Kyushu University. He has been Dean of Graduate School of Systems Life Sciences at Kyushu University since 2015, where his research major is Synthetic Systems Biology and Systems Science of Complex System. He is also a Distinguished Professor. Previously, Professor Okamoto worked as Associated Professor for 11 years at Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan, and spent three years as Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Michigan Medical School, where he received his PhD in Systems Biology. He was in charge of designing the new undergraduate school in Kyushu University, which distinguishes itself through its inclusion of Problem Based Learning (PBL) with Jigsaw method followed by the proposal of effective solutions against various kinds of global scaled social problems including SDGs.

If you want to find out more about attending this year’s conference please visit our conference page or get in touch via email.