Kyoto University is one of the two universities where economic education in Japan started more than a hundred years ago. The history of economic education at Kyoto University goes back to April 1900 when the first lecture in Economics was delivered at the College of Law, Kyoto Imperial University. The Faculty of Economics was established in 1919, and the year 2004 marked its 85th anniversary. We are very proud of our faculty’s long history.
Throughout its history, our university’s academic tradition has been to maintain an atmosphere of freedom and independence from the authorities. Even in times of authoritarian government in Japan, our university has kept that tradition.
Although our principle to respect freedom and independence has not changed, we have realized that Japanese universities must undergo fundamental changes to answer the needs of our fast changing society. Originally, our faculty had two purposes, i.e. to train professional researchers and educate undergraduate students. Over the last two decades, however, our mission has expanded to emphasizing recurrent education and accepting students from overseas. Today, both in our graduate and undergraduate courses, we have the highest ratio of international students among the economic departments of Japanese national universities.
This April, we established a new course focusing on business scienceﾓ. In the near future, we are planning to open a management school where teaching will be done not only by our academic staff but also by business professionals. These are the results of our efforts to provide study opportunities to students with work experience.
Needless to say, our mission is not only to educate students but also to enhance our research abilities. In 2003, our faculty’s research program, in collaboration with colleagues from the Institute of Economic Research, was selected as part of the 21st Century Center of Excellence Programs funded by MEXT (the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology). Under the fierce competition for research funds, we are proud of having received the opportunity to promote our research agenda.
Since understanding the recent changes in China has become of great importance for economists and business leaders all around the world, we established a China-related research center (Shanghai Center) in 2002. The Center is a joint undertaking of our Faculty and Fudan University in Shanghai. Although research on contemporary China is the main purpose of the center, we hope that it will play an important role in student education too.