Certified Evaluation and Accreditation Results forProfessional Graduate Business School

Graduate School of Project Design,
Course of Project Design

Basic Information of the Institution
Ownership: Private

Location: Tokyo, Japan

Accreditation Status
Year of the Review: 2016
Accreditation Status: Accredited（Accreditation Period: April.01.2017 – March.31.2022）

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Certified Evaluation and Accreditation Results
for the Graduate School of Project Design,
Course of Project Design
The Graduate School of Project Design, School of Project Design Course of Project Design(hereafter, the Program) defines its purpose as follows: “The Program aims to train ‘highlyspecialized professionals’ with a wide perspective and an extensive knowledge to fulfill their socialresponsibilities, while playing a new role as a higher educational institution. The cry for cultivating
talented individuals with a strong wills, great intellect, and outstanding leadership qualities to help us
find a way out of our sluggish society and open the way to the future is becoming clamorous. Taking
this social need into consideration, the Program will foster persons with highly specialized talent in
the field of management—project design in particular—of companies.” Therefore, a distinguishingfeature of the Program is its intent to train talented individuals capable of shaping management fromthe viewpoint of “project design” and designing projects. Additional features of the Program, notfound in other professional graduate schools of management, include: its clear focus on educational
objectives by incorporating basic knowledge of project design into the necessary subjects; theconsideration of the entire project, strategy, and implementation process in a consistent business
implementation development of “idea creation,” “development,” “realistic designing (planning),”“master plan,” and “implementation plan” as the target for research and education; and thepublication of a monthly journal, Project Design, to disseminate the importance and significance ofproject design in society. In addition, it is commendable that efficient communication has been
established between the faculty and administrative staff members, and between the staff members
and students, by taking advantage of the small size of the Program. Furthermore, the Program’s
location in the center of Tokyo provides an advantage for studying. Lastly, the Program has
consistently fulfilled its admission cap and enrollment cap since its foundation and student
satisfaction has been high.
However, to further improve the quality of education, the Program should resolve thefollowing issues and challenges.
First, the Program should standardize the expressions used in various materials for
specific purposes, must clearly define “project design,” and should develop a new middle- andlong-term vision to realize it. In so doing, it will be necessary to clarify the strategies to set thedirection of resource allocation, organizational capacity, and value creation toward themedium- to long-term vision, while preserving the relationship between particular purposes
and their medium- to long-term vision.
Next, although, the policy on degree award and the curriculum design policy wereformulated in May 2016, it is necessary to reset the policy on degree award considering thepurpose of the Program. In addition, the curriculum design policy should be also revised. In sodoing, the Program is expected to further clarify the Program’s own idea of bridging theory andpractice in education. Furthermore, it is expected that the following should be improved: setting
a clear standard in the regulations to admit credits earned in other graduate schools before
admission; further clarifying the language in the syllabus to facilitate students’ preparation forclasses; establishing and sharing a consistent policy of handling student absences among
faculty members; and further enhancing the quality of Faculty Development (FD) to help
faculty members improve their skills in teaching and information gathering.
With regard to faculty organization and faculty members, the Program should consider
a number of measures to achieve the Program’s purpose related to novelty, ideas, social change,
and technological progress, as well as other aspects of project design. These include theappropriate placement and proportion of part-time faculty members, and the age balance anddiversity of full-time faculty members. In addition, the proportion of research-based andbusiness-based faculty members should be considered from the point of bridging theory andpractice in education. The appropriate composition and assignment of full-time faculty should
be adjusted to realize the medium- to long-term vision. To accomplish these goals, it isnecessary that the Program set an appropriate policy for faculty organization and review thecontract terms of full-time faculty members, taking the current advantages and disadvantages

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into consideration. The Program should also clearly define “project design,” which is adistinctive purpose of the Program, in order to develop a faculty that can achieve stable
implementation of its curriculum.
In addition, the use of a unified format for listing research achievements and thepromotion of barrier-free access to facilities should also be embraced.
In an effort to address these issues, the Program is expected to work on systematic andcontinuous self-study, which needs to be conducted with objective analysis based on
quantitative and qualitative data. The Program must also make effective use of the results ofself-study, and accreditation to improve education and research activities.
Lastly, the Program is in only its fourth years after its foundation and still faces a
number of basic problems and many challenges, as mentioned above. It has been confirmed inthis accreditation review that the Program has sincerely addressed several of the problems andchallenges noted here through trial and error to attain its own purposes. As it is certain that theProgram will make continuous efforts to address these problems with self-study in place andthat the issues mentioned in this accreditation will be improved, this accreditation brings up
only one recommendation and a number of issues for consideration to be addressed.