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Hiroshi Komiyama
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In April 2005, the Center for Advanced Research and the Graduate Program in Finance were established in the Graduate School of Economics, the University of Tokyo. Plans are also underway to start an undergraduate Department of Finance in the Faculty of Economics.
As we enter the fifth year of the twenty-first century, entire social systems are undergoing profound transformations. The University of Tokyo has a clear strategy that aims for innovation; we are called upon to develop new mechanisms that make more effective use of our resources. Taking the initiative to provide for society's need to train and educate leading professionals, the University of Tokyo established the Graduate School of Law and the Graduate School of Public Policy in April 2004.
The University of Tokyo has the longest tradition of all the universities in Japan and has held the lead for new challenges. As a result, we are a world-class university based on quality of education and research, and are achieving our historic mission to lead progress in learning. Advances have been made in the reorganization of undergraduate and graduate programs, and improvement of research organizations. Blazing a path into the twenty-first century, the University of Tokyo must determine top priority measures to further strengthen its status as a leading research and educational institution in the world. The project of establishing a global base for financial research and education at the Hongo Campus of the University of Tokyo forms an important component of our university's strategy that emphasizes research.
The academic field of finance, within the social sciences, is known for the widespread use of scientific knowledge and techniques. One of the special features of the newly established Graduate Program in Finance is its openness to graduates from the fields of science and technology. At the University of Tokyo, the interdisciplinary reevaluation of the traditional division between the Arts and Sciences is a contemporary issue of utmost importance. By initially resolving this issue, the success of the Graduate Program in Finance will draw attention from within the university and from the greater community outside. Moreover, two features of the Finance Program | the plan to internationalize the program by gathering top academics from around the world and the plan to promote research through private sector funding based on academic-industry cooperation | are both twenty-first century strategic objectives of the University of Tokyo. The capital market always grasps trends of social reform and takes the initiative of the times. I think that this project has strong indications of the progressive leadership necessary to renew the university and rejuvenate scholarship, and I have great hopes for its success.
It is a common understanding that universities will play an important strategic role for the development of economic society in the twenty-first century. The great expectations of universities as well as their increasingly strict assessment are two sides of the same coin. The University of Tokyo will continue to recognize this situation and will take the great step necessary to bring our university into the new millennium. |
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