The first twelve National Colleges of Technology (KOSENs) were founded in 1962. Since then new KOSENs have been founded one after another, adding up to a total number of 55 KOSENs by 2004. The strong demands from industry to foster practical and creative engineers gave rise to the KOSEN system. This year is its 50^th anniversary. The situations surrounding KOSENs have been rapidly changing. And demands from industry to KOSENs have been also changing radically as the globalization of industrial activities rapidly proceeds. This article describes the growth of KOSEN system and how the education system of KOSEN has been revised to meet the demands from industry in the last 50 years. Efforts to the advancement of KOSEN for the next half-century are also described.

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Concerning the establishment of KOSEN, which is Japanese original engineer education system, aim of establishment is revealed based on a fundamental idea of what KOSEN education ought to be, which was formulated at that time in the Ministry of Education. After that the author describes a growth process of KOSEN education reminding own campus life in Numazu KOSEN and discusses its development in the future.

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In 1976, Nagaoka and Toyohashi “Gikadai” , two Universities of Technology, were founded, main purposes of which were for accepting graduates from technical colleges and educating them for leading engineers with practical ability. As one of the practical engineering education programs, the two “Gikadai” planned and started the long term (two to five months) internship program, “Jitsumu-kunren” , at industries in Japan and abroad. Since 1990, number of college graduates who have entered not to “Gikadai” but to general universities has been notably increasing. Since the technical college graduates are in the minority among the huge number of students in general universities under the normal engineering education programs different from those at technical college and “Gikadai” , specialties of the technical colleges are being faded. Nagaoka “Gikadai” is hoping to recuperate from such situation and to strengthen the technical colleges and “Gikadai” route for educating leading engineers with practical ability, who can save the sinking industries and develop future global industries in Japan.

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Advanced Course was established in College of Technology in April, 1992, because high-level scientific knowledge and technical understanding came to be demanded from the engineer who graduated from the College, with a variety of new technical development in the industry, 20 years have passed since the Course was established. On this memorable occasion the significance of its establishment is looked back on in this article.

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On the course of organization of Institute of National College of Technology (NCT), regal fundamentals of NCT as a school of higher education were prepared including definition of objectives, range of affairs, credit regulations, and accreditation. The details of our ideas and activities are looked back over since the time around the 40 years anniversary.

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What should be the engineer education of technical colleges is described chiefly from the viewpoint of the whole man education based on the author’ s various experiences such as attestation evaluation of the technical colleges, the boarding school of secondary education and the engineering school of university. Technical colleges keep good culture and circumstance which contribute to govern ance of education system and to the student’ s conversation ability and outlook on the occupation. This must be the reason why technical colleges have the better reputation than that of the current state of the universities in general.

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Since its foundation fifty years ago, Colleges of Technology (KOSEN) have contributed to social and economic advancement by providing engineers with development skills. However, severe environments facing industry, the popularization of higher education, and the lessons learned from the accident at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, will require future engineers with more evolved skill sets. The ability to overlook the whole, flexibility in mind, and sensibility as the basis of communication are particularly important for an engineer to be prepared to take up and deal with tomorrow’ s technological challenges. KOSEN has a unique advantage to offer programs to nurture engineers in developing these higher skills. These include the introduction of interdisciplinary long-term project exercises, the promotion of student plan type career education, and the cultivation of basis that induces closer cooperation within the local community.

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The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology and The Institute of Colleges of Technology concluded a memorandum of understanding on comprehensive research cooperation (MOU) on July 19, 2011. This paper refers to the results of the collaboration in recent years and the expectations for future collaborations.

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Public Works Research Institute has already made many cooperative agreements with universities and technical colleges. One of the items introduced in these agreements is to incorporate the maintenance works of the bridges managed by local governments. This gives chances to the students to study about the civil structures by OJT and helps the local government to maintain the structures. The paper explains the present situation of the local governments and offers ideas for practical method of education.

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An editorial writer of the Industrial Daily News who reports on industry-academia-government collaboration made an analysis of the education of colleges of technology from points of industry-academia-government collaboration and communication. Seven colleges of technology won the prize about industry-academia-government collaboration and it is characteristics that they make a point of education. The results by the network of colleges of technology all Japan might win it. The analysis showed that there are more news articles about I industry-academia-government collaboration and education beyond our expectations. They hope technological spin-offs which create innovation, for example university spin-offs which is made by industry-academia-government collaboration in Japan. I wonder persons who graduated colleges of technology become right-hand persons for inventors or managers on these spin-offs. Students of colleges of technology have to blush-up communication skills not only special technology for that reason. I hope the education of colleges of technology encourages new talent by the education of industry-academia-government collaboration.

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The origin of success of The College of Technology (KOSEN) system was discussed on the base of the drastic reform of Japanese education system after the War. KOSEN could overcome the various problems which have occurred at university and vocational high school. The strong and week points of KOSEN System were point out. As the result, by bring out and making full out the strong points of KOSEN with introduction of the various kinds of social experiences from young generation, KOSEN will be able to bring the powerful engineers who can create the plentiful of ideas and express of their thought for the problems in their presence and also contribute to invent new products as an entrepreneur will be able to be brought up.

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Approximately 8% enter Universities of Technology among students who graduate from all Colleges of Technology in Japan every year. Students of the College of Technology own an unknown good point. Therefore, it forms the traditional character of the University of Technology after entrance to the university. When we discuss their future that they will work in, we have a responsibility to plan a strategy about what the College of Technology and the University of Technology should do now and to learn the situation of the countries around Japan.

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Six years are going to pass after I retired from a National College of Technology. After resignation, I worked in a Private College of Technology for three years. And I spent the days for the solution to meet experience, that of impression to bring up the person who oozed out from the based study mind. And, in the incumbent four-year university, I look back on a past and can see that I did not see it for the first time in those days. The only higher education system to restore an education at ease evil early is Kosen. The technology/engineer education to survive the economic chaotic times when Japan is global vigorously is entrusted the Kosen with. I hope that Kosen meets expectation of everybody.

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National Colleges of Technology (NCT) founded in 1962 have graduated a lot of practical engineers, matching industry needs. As industrial and economic fields globalize more than ever, graduates of NCT are required to have international mind and communication ability. Furthermore, NCT is also expected to contribute internationally, cooperating with local society and enterprises. In this paper, present and expected future situations of international exchange and support of NCT are described.

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Because a development of a creative and practical ability is requested in the engineering field of the advanced educational institution, the PBL type creative education is tried as a method of education in a lot of universities and colleges of technology. In addition, CAD system has rapidly become widely used in the manufacturing industry as the transmission tool of production information by development of the computer technology. This paper reports the contents of Workshop of Industry and academia collaboration, in order to enhance the design education in College of Technology, was held 4 times from January 31, 2009 in Numazu College of Technology. Furthermore, the author proposed some methods of design education in mechanical engineering in College of Technology for the future.

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In late years fluidization of society and the industry structure is accelerated by the globalization on the earth scale and by the low birthrate and aging in the developed country. To overcome these problems, educational reform utilizing the national traits and regionality is important in our country. As one of these, local industry-university-government-citizen co-operates and builds the engineering design education of market creation type which is carried out in major field mixed team form. In this paper, the co-operative creation type engineering design education introduced to nurture unique engineer in Natori campus of Sendai National College of Technology is explained about the process, problem and future development.

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It is a serious problem that the number of engineers engaged in the work of embedded systems is not sufficient, and therefore it is quite worthwhile for colleges of technology to be involved in a trial to increase the number of such engineers. The conventional framework of departments in the tertiary education system does not seem to function well for that purpose, as embedded systems development is a complex field with a mixture of various fields of study. However, still under the conventional framework of departments, Tokyo National College of Technology has been promoting an educational project, which aims at the development of engineers with not only basic scholastic ability but also the skills required for embedded system development. This project also aims at enhancing the proficiency of highly-motivated students. Students who have finished the course of this educational project are given the qualification of “Meister of Embedded Systems Development” as an incentive. One of the characteristics of this project is that students teach other students with support from the teaching staff. The students who give lectures will be given the qualification of “Student Engineering Educator” , which indicates that the students have educational ability as well as technical ability.

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We have engaged in the project for developing an LED-related technical training base in the southern Tokushima region in the years from 2007 to 2011 at Anan National College of Technology.It was funded by Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and contributed to the training of engineers skilled in LED-technology. We have developed this engineering program to meet the LED-Valley Plan of Tokushima prefecture in a collaboration between academia-industry and government. The courses consist of fundamentals and applications of LEDs, materials sciences and production engineering. The project was finished after 5 years. We have trained 52 skillful LED-engineers well above the planned number of 40. This paper reports the project and its results in detail.

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Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering organizes “ways of learning proactively of students” based on educational experience so far, and currently tries to implement the education program reorganized or structured for new engineers training curriculum on our department. In this paper, as efforts in the two “Good Practice” , summary, lesson content, and methods of assessment and efforts evaluation are introduced. As the “engineering education that actively involved with the local community” , those are discussed the possibilities, task and challenges.

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Based on the award of JSEE according to the creativity and the intellectual property, related projects at Sendai National College of Technology are introduced to draw the framework of education with region. Concerning to Great Earthquake of East Japan, the classification and the characteristics of the seismic damages are indicated to respond the needs of Tohoku region with the seeds of Kosens. After the preparation period of Kosens in Tohoku area, a project for the recovery from the earthquake was admitted by the government. The outline of six projects and an example of the temporary house are introduced.

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This paper presents hands-on activities concerning science and engineering held in local city where teachers are students of Matsue College of Technology and participants are elementary school children and lower secondary school children. In these activities, children experience scientific experiments, and the college students improve their communication skills. The curriculum of Colleges of Technology focuses on technical ability and knowledge, but offers fewer opportunities for cultural sophistication and communication skill trainings. During the hands-on activities, the students got more chances of plainly communicating their technical knowledge to children and of deeply reaffirming their own technical studies. The children participants were vastly satisfactory with the hands-on activities and their parents gave favorable feedback. The hands-on classes were also favorably evaluated by the college students involved with them.

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Educational system promoting the independent and sustainable work for the problem/project based learning was constructed at the Department of Electrical Engineering in Gifu National College of Technology. This system consisted of a point system of the practice technology, rules of the selection for two courses of Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, an educational system for fostering abilities of the engineering design and presentation to an external person of the work produced through the engineering design. Effects by this total educational system were inspected quantitatively by using the data of design abilities and points system. It was shown that the constructed system was effective for promoting the independent and sustainable work for the problem/project based learning at the fourth grade and fifth grade as a result of synergistic effects by this system.

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The first author investigated student motivation for an engineering design project by questionnaire survey at Anan National College of Technology (Anan Kosen) and Illinois University at Urbana-Champaign in 2006. The senior student motivation for the senior design project at Illinois University was higher than the third year student motivation for line trace car design project at Anan Kosen. The difference in student motivation between Illinois University and Anan Kosen was caused by career consciousness after graduation. In addition, Illinois University student more often discussed solution to engineering problems of special subjects, as compared with Anan Kosen students, Illinois University students usually make a concentrated effort to acquire useful practical expertise and skill in occupation after graduation. Thus cooperative education should be introduced so as to improve career consciousness by incorporating career education at an early stage such that freshman visit working alumni at manufacturing companies.

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In Kumamoto National College of Technology, we have designed and implemented a systematic education program of career development since 2003, on the basis of “Synthetic Education Program” and “Homeroom Basic Plan” , established in 2002. This education program consists of curriculum studies and extracurricular activities. In curriculum studies, we support career development of students from entrance to graduation, by two core-subjects and by all subjects using the micro insertion method. This program has produced results. Students have made their career plan through our program, and they have developed their faculties in extracurricular activities. There is, however, a problem to be solved : we should improve an engineer education system more effectively to develop students’ ability and attitude from the perspective of career education.

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This paper makes an attempt to extract significant ways to develop teaching materials for college level Japanese learners of English and stress the importance of developing effective reading textbooks. The author is engaged in examining the development of English teaching materials for students in colleges of technology based on recent reading material development research and second/foreign language reading research. The questionnaire data on the textbooks show that the critical factor motivating students in English reading practice is that the textbooks offer interesting contents along with an effective support system for reading.

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Hoping to improve the students’ English proficiency, colleges of technology have been developing international exchange (IE) activities. However, the outcomes were still limited to motivating the students to learn English because the duration of IE was too short, the participants were too few, and regular English lessons were too different from IE. Some colleges of technology have been conducting extensive reading (ER) programs and showed the effectiveness of ER improving the students’ English proficiency. But they also showed that ER programs needed long duration, and motivating the students through it was not always easy. This article shows that IE and ER, if combined, can improve engineering students’ English proficiency more effectively. First it examines the relation of students’ English proficiency and their learning hours in both IE and ER. Then it shows learning-hour dependent tendencies of students’ TOEIC scores and self-evaluation of the students in an ER program. It proposes a model educational program that combines ER and IE seamlessly at the last part.

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