理事長・総長式辞

Address by Chairman/Rector

Wataru Hasegawa, Chairman/Rector
Kyoto Computer Gakuin / The Kyoto College of Graduate Studies for Informatics / Kyoto Computer Gakuin Automobile School

Upon starting the celebration Ceremony for the 60th anniversary of Kyoto Computer Gakuin and the 20th anniversary of The Kyoto College of Graduate Studies for Informatics, I would like to express my deep feeling of gratitude toward our esteemed guests: the Ambassadors and Embassies of the countries concerned, the people of Kyoto Prefecture, Kyoto City, universities and other educational institutions, corporations and businesses both in Japan and abroad, and many other people from various fields and industries.

This is a special celebratory year for us as we mark the 60th anniversary of Kyoto Computer Gakuin and the 20th anniversary of The Kyoto College of Graduate Studies for Informatics’ inauguration.

It is a great pleasure for our faculties and the staff to welcome our guests, alumni, school supporters, current students, and all the people who are watching our live streaming of today’s ceremony. We are very grateful that you are sharing your precious time to be here with us for this occasion.

Currently， the KCG Group consists of a series of organizations in multiple locations including Kyoto Computer Gakuin Rakuhoku Campus, Kamogawa Campus, and Kyoto-Ekimae Campus; Kyoto Japanese Language Training Center; Kyoto Computer Gakuin Automobile School; The Kyoto College of Graduate Studies for Informatics main Kyoto Campus and the Sapporo and Tokyo Satellite sites; and some corporations that support the education business such as KCG Career. Today，I would like to talk a little about our activities and efforts in the current digital society while looking back at some milestones in our history.

The root of Kyoto Computer Gakuin was a private school started by Shigeo Hasegawa, the first president, and a Kyoto University graduate, and Yasuko Hasegawa, the current president of KCG who was a Kyoto University graduate school student at that time. It started out as a small private school for junior high and high school students, which the young couple ran at home. Then, in 1963, “FORTRAN Workshop” was formed within the school, mainly by the young researchers from Kyoto University. During the time when computers were only for a small number of researchers, the workshop gradually came to be recognized by researchers and corporate people in the Kinki Area.

Later, in 1969 (the 44th year of Showa), a full-time program for high school graduates was established under the name “Kyoto Computer Gakuin”. Shigeo Hasegawa, the founder and the first president of the school left a statement; “Software is a way of thinking, a kind of philosophy and it will transform human history”. Since founding, our school has set a mission of “developing information-processing-engineers filled with creativity to meet the needs of the age” and holds the following five principles as our educational philosophy: “To provide a high-standard education that emphasizes the academic aspects of computer technologies and their theories”, “To provide an education that keeps up with the advancement of computer technologies”, “To foster creative abilities in computer technologies”, “To establish broader viewpoints on information-oriented society”, and “To develop both aspects of intelligent and sensitivity”. This educational philosophy remains unchanged over time as the foundation of our school, and it has been passed down as “the DNA of KCG”.

In 1972, we installed the state-of-the-art general-purpose computer of that time, TOSBAC-3400, in our two-story wooden school building. This was an example of our educational philosophy: “We would provide students with the most cutting-edge educational environment of the time even if we are housed in a barracks.” Since then, we kept equipping our school buildings with large computers one after another. During the 1970s through 1980s, it was exceptional that multiple general-purpose computers were made available to the students at a professional training college for training purpose, and as a result, it became the envy of other national, public, and private universities across the country. At many other universities, expensive computers were reserved for graduate students and researchers, and there were few cases where undergraduate students could use them. Our school still keeps these computers and displays them at our Kyoto Ekimae Campus. In 2009, we were recognized as the first “Satellite Computer Museum” in Japan by the Information Processing Society of Japan for the reason that we “preserve many of Japan's most valuable devices.” Also, seven models of computers in our collection have been certified as “information processing technology heritage.”

Then, in 1983 (the 58th year of Showa), prior to the arrival of the personal computer era, we provided each of our 3,000 plus students with a free computer to take home and practice. This was a world-first initiative. In other countries, Carnegie Mellon University in the United States implemented a similar policy six months later and let each of their students borrow a personal computer.

ARPANET, built by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense, was commercialized, and became the Internet. It came to be available to the public in the early 1990s. At that time, KCG had a student training facility in Boston, USA. We used it as a base and interacted with researchers and students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University. In particular, we exchanged information closely with MIT's Media Lab. Thanks to those connections, we were able to obtain a “.edu” domain. The “.edu” domain is only granted to higher education institutions such as universities in the United States. However, in the early days of the Internet, there were 7 university-related organizations in 7 different countries outside the United States that had close relationships with MIT researchers, and they were granted “.edu”. In other words, for universities and other higher education institutions around the world, holding “.edu” is considered as proof that they have been involved in the cutting edge of the Internet since its dawn.

As times have progressed, and with the advancement of science, remarkable technological innovation, and rapid changes in society and economy, Japanese industry has come to face the urgent needs to develop highly skilled professionals in the IT field who can compete at the global level. The Kyoto College of Graduate Studies for Informatics was established 20 years ago as Japan's first higher education institution to award the terminal degree in the field of applied IT. The school's philosophy of establishment is “to respond to the needs of society, take charge of the times, and train applied information technology specialists with advanced practical abilities and creativity to lead the next generation.” From the beginning, we have been aiming to become an IT professional graduate school for the entire Asia region, and we have been promoting cooperation with other overseas countries as well.

In recent years, we have seen an increase in the number of international students from countries and regions with which we have had no particular ties. They have learned about us through Internet searches and have decided to enter our school after studying our curriculum and other information. Some of the most elite students have applied for Japanese government scholarships, been accepted, and came to us. Our enrollment capacity was 80 in the first year of opening, and it has been increasing year by year. We are now planning to increase the enrollment capacity to 800 for the school year of 2024, which will be 10 times the number of students when the school first opened. In order to ensure the best possible outcomes, we completed a new school building with the latest educational environment in August 2022 at our Kyoto Hyakumanben main campus.

In 2005 (the 17th year of Heisei), we established Japan’s first automotive control system curriculum in Kyoto Computer Gakuin with anticipation of the arrival of the Car IT era. This led to the merger with Kyoto Automobie school, a school with a long history for training auto mechanics, in 2013. Our decision was made in anticipation of the growing importance of car mechanics with IT knowledge amid the rapid shift to IT in automobiles.

In addition to Kyoto University, with which we have a long-standing relationship, we have close ties with more than 130 universities and other educational institutions, including MIT, Harvard University, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), and Columbia University in the United States, and Dalian University of Foreign Languages and Shanghai Jianqiao University in China. We have always pursued the essence of information and technology education while learning from our predecessors in various fields. We are also actively working on curriculum reform, and in 2019 (the 31st year of Heisei), we established the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence, led by experts in pedagogy at our school, to support students' independent learning and realize learner-centered education.

In addition to exchanges with overseas educational institutions, we also focus on activities to support overseas computer education through our International Development of Computer Education, IDCE program. This activity is a computer education support project for developing countries that started in 1989. This is a voluntary activity to donate PCs for practical training that are no longer used in our university to developing countries, and to use them to develop and spread computer literacy education in those countries in cooperation with the local Ministry of Education and Ministry of Science and Technology. We have donated over 3,000 computers to 26 countries in total. This year, approximately 300 computers were donated to Papua New Guinea. This is the second donation to Papua New Guinea. We are honored to have His Excellency the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Gabonese Republic here today in recognition of our overseas computer education support activities.

In the 34 years since the start of our activities, we have also accepted trainees at the request of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and dispatched our faculty overseas as JICA experts. In the Republic of Mozambique, we were also involved in the opening of a higher education institution for information education. As you see, we understand that one of our missions is to contribute to the development of IT education on a global scale and to learn from each other hand in hand with our counterparts in other countries. We hope to continue to work together with you to be a truly global IT education institution in the future.

In addition, our school manages and operates the geographical name top-level domain “.kyoto” with the support of Kyoto Prefecture and with the approval of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), an international domain name management organization. A domain name is not only a “symbol” that identifies a company, organization, or individual, but also a “symbol” as a representation of identity and a “source of pride.” As the administrator of “.kyoto”, we have realized a clean domain name that is safe and secure and maintain a high level of reliability, and have positioned the administration of “.kyoto” as a “social education project” with the goal of promoting the further branding of “Kyoto in the world” by all of Kyoto, industry, government and academia.

It so happens that the “Internet Governance Forum Kyoto 2023 (IGF Kyoto 2023)” organized by the United Nations will be held here in Kyoto City from October 8. This is one of the most important conferences in the field of Internet policy, where many parties involved in Internet-related issues engage in dialogue on an equal footing. It has been held annually since 2006, and this is the first time it is held in Japan. Since the dawn of the Internet, our school has been at the center of its development. We have established the first School on Internet Governance (SIG) office in Japan, and will host a variety of events in conjunction with IGF Kyoto 2023 and as part of the 60th anniversary events of the university.

We are deeply grateful for the warm support and understanding we have received from so many people over our 60-year history. We are convinced that the foundation for the next era will be laid when current students, alumni, faculty and staff carry on the pioneering spirit of KCG, which created Japan's first computer education institution and Japan's first IT professional graduate school, and when the visionary and challenging spirit that lives in the more than 50,000 members of the KCG family shines through in their respective fields. I am convinced that this will be the foundation for the next generation.

Finally, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all of you who are here today and to all those involved, and I sincerely ask for your continued support, cooperation, guidance, and encouragement in the future.

Thank you very much for coming today.

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