President　 HIMURO,Shozo

Contributing to the Future of Humankind

 Founded in 1963, the National Institute of Technology (KOSEN), Kagoshima College has been expanding as a higher education institution by offering diverse engineering education opportunities to its students. The core engineering education model at KOSEN is 5 years long with students starting at the age of 15 after they graduate from junior high school. Reflecting the changing demands of society, KOSEN has established advanced engineering courses which grant bachelor’s degrees to the students. Graduates from KOSEN can also continue to study engineering by transferring to other 4-year universities.

 KOSEN was founded in the 20th century, which one might label “the century of science and technology.” In the 20th century, incredible innovations were developed in many science and engineering fields. Entering the 21st century, the world has been facing new challenges in the job market and the necessity of drastic reform in education due to emerging technologies like AI(Artificial Intelligence) and robots which will perform jobs in place of humans.

 AI is an engineering technique that gives efficient solutions to problems. With further development of AI technology, we will be able to seek more effective solutions for given problems. Accordingly, the role of humans should be shifted to “think” about what is important now. We should think, “What is important in our society?”, “What creates happiness for each of us or the whole society?”, or “How should we balance our different values?”

 Meanwhile, degradation of the global environment has recently accelerated, and in all aspects of our society, huge changes such as large-scale disasters and infectious diseases have been spreading at extreme speeds unlike anything society has experienced previously. In such times, we are asked to respond to change and create new value for the world.

 The educational philosophy of our institute is to teach special subjects and foster abilities useful for future professional practice. In our philosophy, “special subjects” means academic research and its applied technology, while “abilities useful for future professional practice” means not only technical skills necessary for professions in a specific area but also the intellectual and moral skills indispensable for a person who has any job as a member of society.

 In this institute, therefore, learning opportunities are given not only to acquire the knowledge of technology, but also to learn liberal arts and to develop such qualities as autonomy/proactivity, a spirit of enterprise, flexible ideas and profound insight, communication skills, global perspectives, and the acceptance of diversity. Through such education, and with the understanding and support of others, our institute would like to produce engineers who have a creative and practical skillset that contributes to solving various problems facing the future of the humankind.