Supplementary Review Results

Kenichi Ohmae Graduate School of Business

Basic Information of the Institution
Ownership: Private

Location: Tokyo, Japan

Accreditation Status
Year of the Review: 2019
Accreditation Status: Accredited（Accreditation Period: April 1.2020 – March 31.2024）

Supplementary Reviewfor the MBA Program, Department of Management,
Kenichi Ohmae Graduate School of Business

The MBA Program (hereinafter referred to as the “Program”), Department ofManagement, Kenichi Ohmae Graduate School of Business, states its purpose as “toalways achieve the creation world-class, innovative intelligence through constantengagement in intellectual pursuit in an open and free manner in accordance with highethical standards, and, through the creation of intelligence and its inheritance, develop
individuals who have mastered advanced technical skills, who are equipped with thequalities necessary to lead others on a global stage, who are capable of thinking andmaking judgments independently, who can behave according to their own responsibility,
and who can contribute to global society,” and provides education with the aim ofnurturing individuals capable of playing an active role in the rapidly-changing global
business environment. The most distinctive feature of the Program is that it offers its
whole curriculum online via AirCampus®, its original educational platform. The Program
offers multiple subjects that adopt various unique educational methods, and carries out
distinctive activities that connect “graduation research” and entrepreneurial support. A
very high level of student satisfaction was shown.
However, it was judged in the Certified Evaluation and Accreditation forProfessional Graduate Business School for AY2018 (hereinafter referred to as the“Evaluation”) that there was a serious problem with the Graduate School’s facultymembers and faculty (Item 12, perspectives of evaluation 3-4, 3-6-, and 3-9). As a resultof a comprehensive consideration of the situation, it was determined that the Program did
not meet the Professional Graduate Business School Standards of the JUAA. Morespecifically, adequate research achievements were not confirmed for more than half ofthe full-time faculty members classified as research faculty members, and thus a faculty
capable of ensuring the quality of education for bridging between theory and practice wasnot in place. Due to this situation surrounding research faculty members, the policy ofassigning research faculty members to theory-oriented subjects and practitioner faculty
members to practice-oriented subjects had not been implemented. In order to improve thesituation above, the JUAA requested the Program to immediately proceed with hiring
faculty members according to the plan formulated by the Program (Outline of the Faculty
Revision Plan) and establish an appropriate faculty structure.
The present Supplementary Review has obtained the following results with2

regard to the assessment of the status of improvement. The Program has taken the JUAA’s
previous comments very seriously. It immediately began to make improvements, and has
hired multiple research faculty members through active public advertisement. It hasestablished the Criteria for Research Achievements to be applied when hiring researchfaculty members, and has strived to assign faculty members meeting the criteria to teachtheory subjects and basic subjects. The Program defines a research faculty member as “aperson with a doctoral degree and educational experience and research achievements inthe field of business administration,” and has, based on this requirement and the Criteriafor Research Achievements, revised the classification of research faculty members andpractitioner faculty members. The Graduate School has established an environment thatenables research faculty members to continuously disseminate their researchachievements, and has also made improvements to faculty distribution in terms of age
and gender. Considering the overall situation, it can be concluded that steady progress has
been made with regard to the plan presented in the Outline of the Faculty Revision Plan,
and that the problems raised in the Evaluation have been rectified to a certain extent.
However, although a certain degree of improvement has been achieved, moreneeds to be done in order to reach the final goal. The Program needs to implement further
initiatives in order to establish a faculty capable of actually “ensuring the quality ofeducation for bridging between theory and practice.” As institutions of higher education,
universities cannot automatically establish an ideal faculty by simply gathering competentresearchers and practitioners. Rather, it is vital that full-time faculty members engage inexchange and discussion over a long period of time and look for ways to achieve theirunique purposes. During this process, the Program must constantly review its Criteria for
Research Achievements.
Finally, as noted above, the Program is distinct from other typical professional
graduate schools in that it provides online distance learning via its original educational
platform. Since the university was established by a joint-stock company, it has a very
different world view from that of traditional universities. This is a strength of the Program,but also poses challenges that should be overcome. One of those challenges is for theProgram to learn from the culture and practices of existing universities and develop its
original educational activities based on an understanding of such aspects. The present
Supplementary Review has shown that the Program was not familiar with the common
practices of regular universities, and because of that has hitherto been groping in the dark.
It will be helpful for the Program to develop a deeper understanding of how existing
universities operate. By implementing innovative initiatives based on such anunderstanding, the Program will be able to evolve significantly in the future. We hope the3Program continues to implement the measures of improvement and reform to become aleading organization in online MBA education in Japan.

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