Minor Education for Cultivating Broader Perspectives at Osaka University

In the Central Education Council report, acquirement of broader knowledge including related fields of one’ s own major and cultivating broader perspectives are pointed out as what is expected for graduate school education. Engineering was defined as a science that constructs effective things and comfortable environment for public safety, health, and social welfare basing on mathematics, natural sciences, and sometimes on social sciences by the review board of education programs for engineering in 1998. As the education for acquiring broader knowledge and cultivating broader perspectives, the graduate minor education is conducted at the graduate schools in Japan, such as the Interdisciplinary education Program at Osaka University. In this paper, survey results on the graduate minor education will be clearly articulated, then the design and the current status of the graduate minor program at Osaka University graduate schools will be described, and the effects of the graduate minor program will be revealed based on the results of the questionnaires to the students who has finished the programs.