September 28, 2023

Autumn 2023 Graduation Ceremony, President Address

 Congratulations to all of you who are receiving your degrees and graduating from SOKENDAI today. I express my sincere admiration for the efforts that each of you has made on a daily basis to reach this point, as well as my deep appreciation to the faculty who have supported and guided you in those efforts, not to mention your families for the visible, and not so visible, support they too have given you.

 As a result of COVID-19 over these past three years, you were forced to stay home when a state of emergency was declared, and even after that, your access to research facilities was limited and you were unable to travel abroad and conduct research as you would have liked. Yet despite significant constraints like nothing anyone had ever experienced, you still managed to complete your dissertation research. And although the university did take steps to help by providing modest financial support and extending the length of your programs, no one believes these measures alone would have sufficed. So, again, I express my great respect for the efforts that all of you made to overcome such circumstances and earn your degrees today.

 Let me begin by speaking frankly about my current state of mind. Working as a university administrator on a daily basis, I am not often able to experience the joy of academics and research, despite being at a university; more often, I have to deal with the wide range of problems that seemingly arise on a daily basis—be it an urgent issue on campus, the skyrocketing cost of electricity, or complying with a change in government regulations. Not infrequently, I find myself wondering if I really do work at an “institution of learning.” But then, at commencement, I see the bright faces of students like yourselves who have successfully completed your programs at SOKENDAI and are receiving your degrees, and I am glad to have been a part of managing SOKENDAI. It helps me realize that we work hard at our jobs every day so that we can enjoy seeing this very moment. For that reason, I too am genuinely happy today. (Admittedly, if I didn't have to be the one to stand at this podium and deliver a speech like this, I’d probably enjoy the moment even more...)

 Since I have shared my own state of mind, I wish I could ask all of you seated here to do the same, to tell us what you are thinking and feeling right now. Alas, I do not think that today’s event coordinator would give us time for that, so allow me to continue my talk by imagining how you may be feeling.

 If you were to compare yourself today to the person you were when you first enrolled at SOKENDAI a few years ago, how would you say you have grown? As of now, what kind of skills would you say you have acquired through your studies and dissertation research? At admission, I am sure that each of you had your own individual dreams and goals. That said, I imagine you all shared at least one particular goal in common: to earn your doctoral degree. Therefore, I would like to take this as an opportunity to think about what it means to have earned a doctoral degree.

 Obviously, to earn this degree, everyone here completed a dissertation. Although the dissertation is important when applying for your degree from the university, it is also an academic product. As such, we tend to focus on the academic significance and scholarly importance of its content. That said, earning the doctoral degree as a part of your graduate studies requires that you attain “research abilities sufficient to carry out independent research activities and a wealth of academic knowledge as the foundation for doing so.” Your dissertation is just one piece of evidence showing that you have met this requirement. What matters most is not the kind of dissertation you have written, but rather what you achieved in order to write it. Which is why I am less interested in the content of your dissertation as such, than I am in the actual experience behind it.

 What was the process of completing your dissertation like? First, through coursework, you decided on a general research topic, analyzed the topic’s current state, and identified what problems needed solving. Next, you came up with approaches to solve those problems and then initiated research based on those approaches. As your research progressed, you acquired specialized knowledge and methodologies as needed, engaged repeatedly in trial and error, and experienced progress and setbacks on a daily basis until, at long last, you arrived at results about which you were finally able to write. This was the process as I imagine it.

 What it means to have earned the doctoral degree, then, is that you have personally experienced this process and succeeded at it. Now, you may be thinking that your “success” was no big thing. But the significance of your research results is not the point. Rather, completing the process and earning the degree—that is “success.” As you look back over the process and realize that you have an experience or story of your own about the “key to your success” or “the moment when things just clicked”—what a wonderful thing that is. That’s because, as you tackle enormous problems with no solution in sight, an experience like that will give you confidence without you knowing it, and it will support you as you fumble your way forward in search of a solution.

 Nowadays, the ability to discover and solve problems, think logically, and make normative judgments, as well as forms of literacy such as data analysis and communication skills, are often included among the abilities needed to solve complex social problems and transform society. There has been much discussion in society, given the overlap between these abilities and literacies on the one hand and the research skills that are honed in graduate programs on the other, about the need for institutions of higher education to strengthen graduate-level education and produce more doctoral professionals (i.e., doctoral-degree holders) who can play an active role in society, and for Japanese society to make better use of these doctoral professionals. No doubt related to this would also be the notion of “transferable skills” that the OECD and others promote, as well as the skills that make it possible to apply expertise on a particular topic or research to other contexts, including other fields of research and solutions to social problems. For society today, “what it means to have earned a degree” entails more than acquiring highly specialized knowledge and methodologies (skills and knowledge) and implementing processes to discover and solve problems in one’s area of expertise; it entails the ability to implement those same processes across different contexts as well.

 Once you have received your degrees and leave SOKENDAI, you will follow a path of your own choosing. Wherever you work and whatever you do, you can expect to be asked how you will use and apply the skills and experience you have attained so far. Needless to say, virtually no one will use unchanged the knowledge and methodologies they currently possess for the rest of their lives. The knowledge and methodologies that you currently possess are the starting point for tackling new research questions and social issues, and just as you have done throughout the process you followed to this point, you will continue to absorb new knowledge and methodologies as needed to solve problems, or perhaps even create knowledge and develop methodologies on your own. What is expected of you is no longer that you attain “research abilities sufficient to carry out independent research activities and a wealth of academic knowledge as the foundation for doing so.” You have completed your graduate-school “training,” so to speak, and now the time has come for you to demonstrate the results of that training in a real-world setting.

 Among the “needed skills” I mentioned earlier, I think “the ability to discover problems” will be particularly important as you take on new challenges in a new environment. That’s because you are at the precise point in your lives where you have to decide what it is you are going to do. I confess that I am a little uncomfortable with the way we talk about “discovering problems.” After all, “discovering” means finding something that no one has found before, does it not? That being the case, the expression “discovering problems” makes it sound as if there are problems that already exist and are in hiding somewhere, making it our job to find them. What we really mean when we talk about “discovering problems” is the ability to analyze current circumstances and identify what the problems are and what needs to be done about them. Perhaps instead we should talk about the “ability to identify challenges.”

 That said, what I truly think we need is not the ability to analyze current circumstances and identify what the problems are and what needs to be done about them. Rather, what we need is to discern whether our solutions to a problem or our refinement of a question will lead to even bigger ideas and to changes in how we think. That ability, which is less about “discovering problems,” would be better referred to as “the ability to ask the right question.” If you are able to ask the right questions, and given your ability to execute the processes for which you have been trained, I am confident that great results cannot help but follow. With this in mind, I hope you will fly away from SOKENDAI in high spirits.

 My sincerest congratulations to you today. We look forward to your future endeavors.

2023, September,28
Takashi Nagata, President
The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI