Message from the Past Presidents (5th President, 2019-23)

I have been elected as the 5th President of JABEE at its Board of Directors held on 29 May 2019 succeeding Dr. Mutsuhiro ARINOBU.

JABEE will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of its establishment this year. Given consideration to all the efforts made by the successive Presidents and the stakeholders and tremendous contributions made by the constituent academic societies, I become aware of the weight of my responsibilities.

The era is largely changing and the environment surrounding us is changing as well. The　education, which should be carefully treated and discussed in a long-term, is also influenced to no small degree by major break of the era. Numbers of higher education institutions have been progressing innovation by their own amongst the changes and the wave of the era which may also change our sense of values. I believe that JABEE may be able to assist the innovation of higher education institutions through the program accreditations. On the other hand, after 20 years of JABEE establishment, I strongly feel that JABEE, once aging, needs to review its whole concepts by having continuous discussions while foreseeing the future of Japan as well as the globe from the long span perspective.

I have worked as an engineer in a private company for more than 30 years and have been involving in the management of technology as an executive manager about a decade afterward. Majority of Japanese companies have been hiring people on the premise of employment for life basis and this unique Japanese style contributed to the development of Japanese society after the World War II. However, its uniqueness tends to become a burden for the acceleration of global competition in the rapid movement of globalization. Such a downside has begun to expose in many occasions today. Japanese companies no longer invest to educate employees by hiring students with potential. Many companies have already started changing their framework of hiring people on the premise of employment for life basis. Japanese low birth rate and longevity have become inevitable. The use of foreign work force has also become indispensable. I believe that for hiring employees, the framework to ensure the quality of education they have received will serve quite an important role. The time has come for companies to re-acknowledge the importance of roles which JABEE take and for more programs to apply for accreditation which strives to make innovation to their education institutions. As a new President, I would like to stop the recent gradual drop of accredited programs and to shift into increment by taking the current globalization as an opportunity.

JABEE’s international activities have been boosted up by the continual efforts made by JABEE’s forerunners. Namely, the approvals on the continuous signatory status for next six years in the Washington Accord and in the Seoul Accord and the effort towards the signatory admission to the Canberra Accord as well as the activities to assist Indonesia in establishing IABEE. JABEE would highly appreciate and welcome continued supports from every stakeholder and keep moving forward. JABEE international activities will play an important role for quality assurance of engineers to industry which actively considers enhancing the workforce from oversea and the mobility of human resources. Furthermore, JABEE accreditation, which is in accordance with a global standard, will effectively back up the students who wish to practice engineering worldwide.

Programming education in the elementary school will start from the year 2020. Information has started having strong correlation with various kinds of fields and massive accumulated date has begun to return into the society in a form of value. The companies, which used to have minimum number of experts, have started searching experts, who are eligible to utilize information technology and technology for branding purpose now. Cutting edge technologies as well as professional ethics are required more than ever as information, which they are asked to handle, contain not only highly elaborated one but also suspicious one. We are about to dive into the era where highly qualified experts are expected to perform actively.

Japan is known as an advanced country with numbers of problems. In order to solve them, the innovation of industry and of higher education institutions is urgent. Professionals today are expected to have width and depth in their abilities based on their expertise and to work in a team with problem-solving attitude. JABEE intends to elevate ourselves to meet the needs of society by closely working together with constituent academic societies. I shall contribute to strengthen JABEE activities as a new President to the best of my ability. I would greatly appreciate your lasting cooperation.