By CHIKA YAMAMOTO/ Staff Writer
January 20, 2023 at 16:56 JST
Yujiro Tanaka, right, president of Tokyo Medical and Dental University, and Kazuya Masu, who heads the Tokyo Institute of Technology, show agreements of the merger in Chuo Ward in Tokyo on Oct. 14. (Chika Yamamoto)
Two of Japan’s top-ranked universities will be called the Institute of Science Tokyo after their planned merger in fiscal 2024, the two institutions announced on Jan. 19.
The Tokyo Institute of Technology and Tokyo Medical and Dental University said the new name shows their resolve to encourage progress in science and create within a wider society a great future.
The name will become official after going through legal procedures involving the education ministry and the Diet.
Between November and December 2022, the two universities invited the public online to suggest a new name.
They received more than 6,000 proposals, including those from their campuses, which helped them come up with the new name.
The merger is part of the two national universities’ work to win a grant from a 10 trillion yen ($77 billion) government fund program launched in 2022 aimed at boosting the global competitiveness of Japanese higher education institutions.
The two universities announced their merger in October 2022, saying it would help them start new research and educational projects and develop human resources.
The Tokyo Institute of Technology has about 10,000 graduate and undergraduate students while about 3,000 students attend Tokyo Medical and Dental University.
This is the first merger of national universities since 2007, when the Osaka University of Foreign Studies became part of Osaka University.
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