Graduate study at Nanzan used to be heavily oriented toward MA degrees in the humanities for students expecting to pursue academic careers. For a number of years now, however, Nanzan has been offering a growing range of vocationally oriented graduate programs, such as those in Business Administration and Law, which are popular among talented young men and women aiming at careers in business and the civil service. Also, the traditional reluctance of universities in Japan to grant a doctoral degree to anyone except a well-established scholar has given way to change over recent years, and Nanzan has been at the forefront of the trend toward offering graduate programs that lead to doctor's as well as master's degrees. In April 2004 the University's graduate school program was expanded to serve the evolving needs not only of the academic community but also of the public and corporate sectors, in response to the new demands that lie ahead for our increasingly globally aware society.

In the fall of 2003 the final approval of the Japanese Ministry of Education was received for the establishment of an entirely new graduate school program, which came into effect at the beginning of the 2004-2005 academic year. The restructuring of the graduate school program has involved the setting up of five new graduate schools accompanied by the reorganization of existing graduate schools and their programs. The new graduate schools established in 2004 represent the fields of Humanities, International Area Studies, and Policy Studies, which are each initially offering master's degree programs; Mathematical Sciences and Information Engineering, which offers both master's and doctor's degree programs; and, finally, the Nanzan School of Law, which offers a vocationally oriented program in Law. The long-standing Graduate School of Arts and Letters admitted its final intake of doctoral candidates in April 2004, while the school's individual research programs at master's degree level have been subsumed within the new research programs of the Graduate School of Humanities. The other graduate schools of Economics and Business Administration, meanwhile, continue to offer both master's and doctor's degree programs, which remain ever popular. The new graduate program heralds exciting times ahead at Nanzan, with whole new avenues of opportunity for innovative research now available to a new breed of graduate students. Below is an outline of the new graduate schools and programs that are now on offer.

Further information regarding the nature and contents of the respective programs and application procedures is currently available only in Japanese. Please check that your browser is able to display Japanese before visiting the Japanese site's Graduate School page. Individual graduate schools and descriptions of their programs can be accessed via links within that page. If you have any queries, please contact the Graduate School Office by e-mail at ml-grad@nanzan-u.ac.jp or by other means at the address given below.