New Technical High School to Teach Future Entrepreneurs Opens in Japan
New Technical High School to Teach Future Entrepreneurs Opens in Japan
The Kamiyama Marugoto College of Technology aims to have 40% of its graduates start their own businesses.
What’s new: Lately there has been a lot of negative news about Japan’s shrinking population, long-stagnant wages, often bureaucratic and slow decision-making process, the lack of opportunities and equality in the workplace for women that is so bad that many of the best and brightest are now seeking job prospects abroad. A brand-new 5-year private technical high school that just opened at the beginning of April offers, however, a ray of hope and is likely to become a potential future source of home-grown entrepreneurs in Japan. It may, ultimately, have a profound effect on the corporate culture of Japan.
The Kamiyama Marugoto College of Technology was established by the president of an IT company and features a brand-new school building in Kamiyama Town, Tokushima Prefecture. The school seeks to provides an innovative three-part curricula focused on technology, design, and entrepreneurship.
Students will learn about design and entrepreneurship based on software, AI (artificial intelligence), and other information engineering.
The school aims for students to be "people who create things with the power to create things.”
In this day and age, the creation of new products and services requires not only IT skills such as software, but also the power of design. In addition to technology and design, the ability to create things, in other words, an entrepreneurial spirit, is also necessary to link this to sustainable business.
Why it matters: The Kamiyama Marugoto College of Technology is the first new technical high school to be opened in Japan in about 20 years. Thus, it really stands out in a country where school closings and school consolidation have become commonplace due to depopulation—especially in the countryside.
It is attracting attention from the business world, which will offer free tuition to all students through a 10 billion yen (approximately US $75 million) fund contributed by the Sony Group, Softbank, and other companies.
"I am excited and thrilled because it will expand my possibilities, and I want to use what I learn over the five years to develop products.” -- Rika Takeda, a new student from Tokushima Prefecture
The new school has caught the attention of Japan, Inc. because of its hands-on approach to learning. Japanese companies are hungry for human resources who can actually solve various social issues through hands-on activities. This is why society's interest in and expectations for the new technical college are so high.
Driving the news: The Kamiyama Marugoto College of Technology traces its roots to its entrepreneurial founder, Mr. Chikahiro Terada, a corporate executive who founded Sansan, a business card management service listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime.
“I am an entrepreneur, but I have never studied entrepreneurship or management inside education, that is, through compulsory education, high school, or university education. I actually learned it through my previous job at Mitsui & Co. and through the management of Sansan. If we could do this inside education, more entrepreneurs would be born. I have always thought so.” — Chikahiro Terada
Thus, the Kamiyama Marugoto College of Technology has come to fruition due to a rare case of an a successful businessman, who is still in his mid-forties, putting his financial resources behind a new school, and Terada is encouraging the school’s students to aim high.
"I would like to start a company that helps people in the future, based on advice from the lecturers who are entrepreneurs.” – Incoming 1st year Takeshi Eda from Hokkaido
The school aims to encourage a whole new cohort of home-grown entrepreneurs from across the country. Its first class is composed of 44 young people from all over Japan from Hokkaido in the north to Okinawa in the south. This elite group was selected from an initial pool of 399 applicants.
By the numbers: Any M.B.A. would recognize some of the metrics used to clarify the objectives, goals, strategies, and tactics of Kamiyama Marugoto College of Technology’s business-friendly approach.
Of the total number of classes over the five years until graduation, 40% are general subjects such as Japanese, English, and mathematics, 30% are information engineering including programming, 15% are design-related such as product design, UI/UX*, design thinking, and problem finding, and 15% are entrepreneurship where students learn problem solving, leadership, teamwork, etc. UI stands for user interface, which is all information that comes into the user's field of vision, such as the design of a website or application, and UX stands for user experience, which is the experience that users get from using a product or service.
The school also incorporates many elements that are characteristic of technical colleges, such as exercises, practical training, PBL (Project Based Learning: problem-based learning), and active learning (active learning).
The ratio of classes is an average over the five years of study at the school, and the margins of classes increase as students move up through the fourth and fifth grades. In these margins, students will engage in joint research with companies, graduation research, internships for some students, and entrepreneurship. At present, the expected career paths for graduates are 40% to start their own businesses, 30% to find employment, and 30% to go on to university.
Remote work opportunities breathe new life into a local community. At first glance the location of this new school seems surprising. It is in a depopulated town with less than 5,000 people in the middle of Shikoku Island, the smallest of Japan’s main islands. This town is, however, known for its unique approach to regional development, including the concentration of satellite offices and the hosting of artist-in-residence programs for artists from Japan and abroad.
However, Terada's discovery of Kamiyama was by coincidence.
Years ago one of his friends from college was involved in the renovation of an old private house, and Terada decided to visit on a whim. The project was called Green Valley, a non-profit organization that provides support for Kamiyama's immigration exchange. The plan was to attract IT engineers from the city as new internal migrants.
The open atmosphere of Green Valley and Kamiyama attracted Terada, and in order to explore new ways of working, he built an experimental office in an old house in Kamiyama, allowing employees to work remotely.
At first, it was only positioned as an experiment, and if remote work had a negative impact on productivity in the core business, Terada had planned to stop at any time. However, the productivity of the employees working at the satellite office did not decline, and conversely, some of them even expressed a desire to move to the area.
Terada himself began to be attracted to the open and liberal atmosphere created by Green Valley and Kamiyama, as well as to the people of Kamiyama, who were willing to take on new challenges.
He began to think that it would be interesting to build a school in Kamiyama, and that if a school was to be built, there was no other place than Kamiyama. Thirteen years have passed since this “ah hah” moment.
What’s next. Very few schools that have taken the concept of embracing "entrepreneurship" to such an extent.
"As long as you keep challenging yourself, you will never fail, and there is nothing to learn but to learn…One person's ambition can change the world. Everyone's ambition will eventually move the world. Let's make things happen with the power to create things.” -- Chikahiro Terada, encouraging the first group of incoming students
With such enthusiastic moral and financial support, it is safe to say that we can expect great things from the future graduates of the Kamiyama Marugoto College of Technology.
Links to Japanese Sources:
https://kamiyama.ac.jp/, https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20230402/k10014027011000.html, and https://jbpress.ismedia.jp/articles/-/74596
#KamiyamaMarugotoNationalCollegeofTechnology #Sansan #ChikahiroTerada #学校法人神山学園 #寺田親弘 #神山まるごと高専
this is groundbreaking, for Japan. A minute drop in the bucket for what japan needs, but its a start. Hell, I'd like to attend that high school now, need some entreprneural advice.
Very encouraging!