Internship program in overseas will be effective if we design the program in cooperation with local university and so called ‘Japanese consortium’ companies and government organizations. Especially, organizing Japanese consortium is not too difficult even in overseas, and that can be appealed to the Asian universities since there are many students who are interested in Japanese business, culture and society. Therefore it is important to obtain internship opportunities from Japanese companies having business in Asia in order to develop attractive joint overseas internship pro-gram together with overseas partner universities.

Due to the offer from the Disney Company, we have been given amazing opportunities to send students to Walt Disney World in Florida, USA, as internship students. Though we had difficulty in the process of signing MOA, we were finally successful in signing the agreement. Students can learn business and hospitality-related subjects at Valencia College and act out what they have learned in the Walt Disney Parks and Hotels. Students who took part in the program returned home remarkably grown mentally.

This paper presents a new approach to the Problem Based Learning (PBL). The problem in the PBL is shared by Japanese students, foreign students and local companies who really want to advance into the overseas market. The emphasis is placed on Japanese college students who cannot find meaning in their lives. Students who have joined a Breakthrough project can build self-confidence after opening a new market.

This article provides an overview of the Overseas Internship Program of National Institute of Technology (NIT) and reports its effect on NIT students’ motivation and actions toward the learning of foreign languages and the understanding of different cultures. The program was designed to offer students of the advanced engineering courses and would-be students in the next academic year an opportunity to have hands-on training for about three weeks in foreign offices of Japanese companies in 2008. Since then, the number of students who participate in the internship program and the cooperative companies have been gradually increasing. Therefore, the program has made a great contribution to the development of global human resources at NIT. The student who participated in the program last March and interned at the engineering company in Malaysia was also motivated by languages and cultures, and she realized the importance of having a positive intention and making an effort to communicate with people from other countries in the current globalized society.

Nowadays, no institution can possibly survive without effectively responding to the radical environmental changes brought by globalization. Universities and colleges are no exceptions. Over the last decade or so higher educational institutions across the globe were thrown into a worldwide competition: universally recognized quality education, including study abroad experience, and regular production of cutting edge research by faculty became the sine qua non baseline features for survival. However, practical limitations linked to financial resources and human capitals exacerbate the competition further, creating gaps of performance between and within the public and private institutions. This is especially true for smaller universities and colleges, but in recent years similar trend is observed as well with larger colleges and universities. The current paper demonstrates how by systematically combining existing programs into one overarching program with a clear objective, colleges and universities can make a difference. In this paper the author argues that four conditions―strong Commitment (C) of faculty and staff; Continuity (C) of programs; Institutionalization (I) of programs; and strong Leadership (L)―offer possible keys to survival and success.

Kyushu’s proximity to other East Asian countries affords it the potential to be a gateway to other Asian countries and positions the region as a place to carry out international business. However, many Japanese companies face linguistic barriers. In particular, ability in English is a necessary condition for functioning as global talents. If companies do not address this issue, they are handicapped in global competition. The author presents a case study of a company headquartered in Fukuoka where English is spoken in order to examine the importance of English for the development of global talents.

School trips abroad undertaken by high schools in Japan provide opportunities for students to raise motivation to learn English through intercultural experiences. To probe precise changes in students’ motivation before and after the trips, the author asked 487 students in two schools to answer a questionnaire based upon Self-Determination Theory. A conspicuous difference of the trip programs in the schools is the destination country: School A to Taiwan and School B to Malaysia. The students from School B had opportunities to communicate with Malaysian students in English whereas those from School A had fewer opportunities to use English. After the trip in the School B, the number of the students who are not motivated to learn English more than before decreased,and the number of more motivated students increased. On the other hand, the students from School A did not show significant changes in motivation. Answers from the questionnaires show, however, that a large number of students find English indispensable for their future career. These results suggest that intercultural experiences, especially some interactions in English with student swith different cultural background, would provide effective incentives to learn English.