Type Public (National) President Juichi Yamagiwa Total enrollment 22,785 (1 May 2015) Founded 1897 | Established Founded Jun. 18, 1897 Academic staff 2,864 (Teaching Staff) Phone +81 75-753-7531 Color Dark blue | |
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Motto in English Freedom of academic culture Endowment ¥ 250.2 billion (2.2 billion USD) Address Yoshidahonmachi, Sakyo Ward, Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture 606-8501, Japan Motto 自由の学風 (Freedom of academic culture) Undergraduate tuition and fees Domestic tuition: 535,800 JPY (2014), International tuition: 535,800 JPY (2014) Notable alumni Sin'ichirō Tomonaga, Ryōji Noyori, Susumu Tonegawa, Kenichi Fukui, Shigefumi Mori Similar University of Tokyo, Osaka University, Nagoya University, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Keio University Profiles | ||
Kyoto university 2016 campus life
Kyoto University (京都大学, Kyōto daigaku), or Kyodai (京大, Kyōdai) is a national university in Kyoto, Japan. It is the second oldest Japanese university, one of Asia's highest ranked universities and one of Japan's National Seven Universities. One of Asia’s leading research-oriented institutions, Kyoto University is famed for producing world-class researchers, including ten Nobel Prize laureates, (including Sin'ichirō Tomonaga) two Fields medalists and one Gauss Prize winner.
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History
Kyoto University's forerunner was the Chemistry School (舎密局, Seimi-kyoku) founded in Osaka in 1869, which, despite its name, taught physics as well. (舎密 is a transcription of a Dutch word chemie.) Later, the Third Higher School (第三髙等學校, Daisan-kōtō-gakkō) was established in the place of Seimi-kyoku in 1886, it then transferred to the university's present main campus in the same year.
Kyoto Imperial University (京都帝國大學, Kyōto-teikoku-daigaku) as a part of the Imperial University system was established on June 18, 1897, using the Third Higher School's buildings. The higher school moved to a patch of land across the street, where the Yoshida South Campus stands today. In the same year of the university's establishment, the College of Science and Technology was founded. The College of Law and the College of Medicine were founded in 1899, the College of Letters in 1906, expanding the university's activities to areas outside natural science.
After World War II, the current Kyoto University was established by merging the imperial university and the Third Higher School, which assumed the duty of teaching liberal arts as the Faculty of Liberal Arts (教養部, Kyōyō-bu). The faculty was dissolved with the foundation of the Faculty of Integrated Human Studies (総合人間学部, Sōgō-ningen-gakubu) in 1992.
Kyoto University has since 2004 been incorporated as a national university corporation under a new law which applies to all national universities.
Despite the incorporation which has led to increased financial independence and autonomy, Kyoto University is still partly controlled by the Japanese Ministry of Education (文部科学省, Monbu-kagaku-shō).
The University's Department of Geophysics and their Disaster Prevention Research Institute are represented on the national Coordinating Committee for Earthquake Prediction.
Campuses
The university has three campuses in Yoshida, Kyoto; in Katsura, Kyoto; in Gokashō, Uji
Yoshida Campus is the main campus, with some laboratories located in Uji. The Graduate School of Engineering is currently under process of moving to the newly built Katsura Campus.
Organization
The university has about 22,000 students enrolled in its undergraduate and graduate programs.
Academics
Kyoto University promotes itself as an academic institution fostering a "spirit of freedom." The university claims ten Nobel Laureates and two Fields Medalists among its faculty and alumni. The university is also known as the starting point for the Kyoto School philosophical movement.
Notable research institutes and facilities
Academic rankings
Kyodai is one of the most prestigious universities in Japan. It can be seen in the several rankings such as shown below. The Academic Ranking of World Universities ranked the Kyoto University as follows:
The Times Higher Education ranked the Kyoto University as follows:
The QS World University Rankings ranked the Kyoto University as follows:
The URAP ranked the Kyoto University as follows:
General rankings
The university was ranked 3rd in 2008 and 2010 in the ranking "Truly Strong Universities" by Toyo Keizai. In another ranking, Japanese prep school Kawaijuku ranked Kyodai as the 2nd best university in Japan.
Kyodai is also one of the top universities in the world. The following rankings are the example of Kyodai's ranking positions in the world rankings.
Research performance
Kyodai is usually considered as one of the top research institution in Japan. In fact, the 2nd largest amount of investment from Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, which is the national grants program for research institutions.
This financial support from the Japanese government has a direct effect on Kyodai's research outcomes. According to Thomson Reuters, Kyodai is the 1st best research university in Japan. Its research excellence is especially distinctive in Chemistry (1st in Japan, 4th in the world), Biology & Biochemistry (2nd in Japan, 23rd in the world), Pharmacology & Toxicology (2nd in Japan,30 in the world), Immunology (3rd in Japan, 25th in the world), Material Science (4th in Japan, 22nd in the world), and Physics (4th in Japan, 25th in the world).
In another ranking, Nikkei Shimbun on 2004/2/16 surveyed about the research standards in Engineering studies based on Thomson Reuters, Grants in Aid for Scientific Research and questionnaires to the heads of 93 leading Japanese Research Centers. Kyodai was placed in the 10th position (research planning ability 6th) in this ranking.
Kyodai also has a high research standard in Social Sciences & Humanities. Repec in January 2011 ranked Kyodai's Institute of Economic Research as Japan's 3rd best economic research institution. Kyodai has provided 6 presidents of the Japanese Economic Association in its 42-year history, which is the 3rd largest number.
Asahi Shimbun summarized the amount of academic papers in Japanese major legal journals by university, and Kyodai was ranked 6th for the period between 2005 and 2009.
Graduate school rankings
Kyodai Law School is considered as one of the top Law schools in Japan, being ranked 4th in terms of the number of successful candidates of Japanese Bar Examination in 2009 and 2010.
Eduniversal ranked Japanese business schools, and the Faculty of Economics in Kyodai is placed 4th in Japan (111th in the world).
Alumni rankings
Kyodai alumni are distinctively successful in Japanese industries such as shown below.
According to the Weekly Economist's 2010 rankings, graduates from Kyodai have the 10th best employment rate in 400 major companies in Japan. However, it has to be noted that this lower ranking position is because of the large number of alumni who become government bureaucrats, which is 2nd largest among Japanese universities. In fact, alumni of Kyodai's average salary is the 5th best in Japan, according to the PRESIDENT.
Mines ParisTech : Professional Ranking World Universities ranks Kyodai as 5th in the world in 2011 in terms of the number of alumni listed among CEOs in the 500 largest worldwide companies.
Popularity and selectivity
Kyodai is one of the most selective universities in Japan. Its entrance difficulty is usually considered as one of the top among 180 national and public universities.
Athletics
Kyoto University competes in 48 sports. The university is a member of the Kansai Big Six Baseball League.
Notable people
- Hideki Yukawa - winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1949; he became the first Japanese to win the Nobel prize
- Shinichiro Tomonaga - winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965
- Kenichi Fukui - winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1981
- Susumu Tonegawa - winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1987
- Aung San Suu Kyi - winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991
- Ryōji Noyori - winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2001
- Makoto Kobayashi - winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2008
- Toshihide Masukawa - winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2008
- Shinya Yamanaka - winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2012
- Isamu Akasaki - winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2014
- Heisuke Hironaka - mathematician, Fields Medalists in 1970
- Shigefumi Mori - mathematician, Fields Medalists in 1990
Notable alumni
Graduates of Kyoto University including Nobel laureates, Japanese politicians, philosophers, economists, and scientists.
Notable research
Researchers at Kyoto University and Toyohashi University of Technology have conducted research that leads to the conclusion that ten-month-old babies prefer the underdog.