Certified Evaluation and Accreditation Results forProfessional Graduate Business School

The Graduate School of Business,
the University of Hyogo

Basic Information of the Institution
Ownership: PublicLocation: Hyogo, Japan

Accreditation Status
Year of the Review: 2013
Accreditation Status: accredited （Accreditation Period:April.01.2014 – March.31.2019）2

Certified Evaluation and Accreditation Results
for the Graduate School of Business, the University of Hyogo

The Graduate School of Business (hereafter, GSB) at the University of Hyogo states its
basic mission as “making contributions to regional developments by cultivating
business management professionals who can take an active part in bridging their local
societies and the world, and by producing talented persons who can take responsibility
for social innovations.” Based on this mission, it defines its unique purposes as follows:
to “foster professionals specialized in business, those who possess highly specialized
professional abilities such as broad knowledge, the ability to think and decide, global
perspectives, and leadership.” In addition to their “high innate dispositions, professional
ethics, and specialized abilities,” those who graduate will be “equipped with highdegree of management abilities to take responsibility for managerial and administrative
practices in private companies and public institutions.”
In order to achieve this purpose, the GSB has set up three courses of study:
Business Innovation, Regional Innovation (including its certificate program for Japan
Small and Medium Enterprise Management Consultants), and Healthcare Management.
The Business Innovation course aims at fostering talented persons who can takean active part in international business practices and societies. It is a course for those
who move straight into the GSB after having just earned a bachelor’s degree. Students
mainly take classes during the weekdays.
The Regional Innovation course aims at cultivating management professionals
who possess practical management skills based on business theories. It is a course for
adult, non-traditional students who already have jobs. Students mainly take classes
offered on Saturdays. In addition, this course aims at producing management
consultants for small and medium businesses who understand high-level management
theories and who can make contributions to the local economic developments. To meetthis aim, the GSB holds a course to become a registered Japan Small and Medium
Enterprise Management Consultant.
The Healthcare Management course aims at fostering managerial administrators
for private and public medical institutions who have strong management skills. It is acourse for both those who move into the GSB Program after having just earned
bachelor’s degrees and those adult, non-traditional students who already have jobs.
Students mainly take classes offered on Saturdays.
The faculty members in the GSB engage in their education and research
activities based on the above purposes, aims, and organizations of course of study. The
GSB has two strengths that should be commended.
First, the GSB has taken the initiative to make contributions to local society andits developments by setting up the “Industry-Academic-Government Conference forInnovation and Human Resources” to promote cooperation between the school, industry,and local governments. Local economic associations and organizations have been themain constituency of the conference along with the school. The conference has made it
possible for the GSB to implement education connected with the local communities.
This kind of initiative is necessary for professional business schools focusing onvitalization of local communities. It can be said that this is a unique initiative that meets
local needs while offering site-based education.
Second, it is commendable that the school has constructed a curriculum that
integrates theory and practice, and that it has offered students an education through theexperiences of actual sites. In particular, each of the three courses offers a fieldwork

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study, in which practice-oriented education is implemented at actual sites within andoutside of Japan. Through the class, students acquire skills to conduct research, analyze,and evaluate the data, give advice, and formulate strategies.
Having highlighted these strengths, Japan University Accreditation AssociationJUAA) would like to mention that it is necessary for the GSB to make its presence more
visible as future competition increases among business schools, including professional
business schools focusing on management in the future. Although a number ofconsiderations can be made, JUAA can point out that the four concerns below areespecially important.
First, it is necessary to make efforts to link the three courses of study in the GSB
organically in terms of strategies and educational content. In particular, the GSB should
strategically consider a system to produce synergistic effects of the three courses, whiledevising a measure to organize a curriculum that goes beyond the boundaries of thethree courses.
Second, regarding the curriculum, in the Business Innovation course, there areefforts to strengthen English abilities for businesses and study abroad opportunities.
However, education from global perspectives is also needed for the Regional Innovationand Healthcare Management courses. Therefore, it is expected that the GSB willaddress the issue of globalization through educational methods in these courses such asoffering lectures in English.
Third, concerning student support, it is expected that the GSB will enrich thesystem through which it determines student wide-ranging needs and use the results toimprove its services for students. In addition, as a task for the future, the GSB needs todevelop not only the faculty’s individual responses but also a systematic andinstitutional measure to respond to students’ concerns expressed in the consultation
meetings concerning their course takings and campus lives.
Fourth, in terms of educational and research environments, it is urgently needed
for the GSB to improve the Internet environment, as it is not yet well developed. Theschool enrolls adult students and those who commute from a distance. It is necessary
for the GSB to develop a leaning environment that allows the students to have access tovarious electronic journals and databases, to make forms available through the Internet,
and to make it possible to submit them to offices through it.
It is expected that the GSB will improve itself as a professional business schoolin the future, as it has developed an education centered on practice-oriented, site-basededucation, meeting the demands of the local communities. For that purpose, it shouldmake efforts to continuously conduct self-studies and evaluations, to improve andreform its education, and to further strengthen its unique characteristics, leading to its
further development and enrichments.