Overseas, the anniversary of the advent of business school education is approaching the 100-year mark. Meanwhile, in Japan, the diffusion of business schools only began in earnest starting in the first decade of the present century. Due to this lack of history of “business school” education and training in Japan, a variety of organizations (specialty schools, private juku schools, companies themselves) claim to provide such training, which causes considerable confusion about the “business school” concept.

From the viewpoint of global standards, a graduate school is not equivalent to a business school. Unfortunately, however, one encounters very few people in Japan who recognize this difference. At the same time, even university students abroad understand it. In actuality, the correct way of comprehending business school education is to view it as a third-year or fourth-year major course in management education in an undergraduate business management faculty, in addition to the education courses taught at the graduate school level for obtaining Master’s and Ph.D. degrees.

Thus, the “domain” of a business school becomes the entire scope of a dedicated education (“major” program) based on managerial science taught after a student finishes his or her first or second year of general education at a university. Not only does the business school provide the above-stated academic degrees in managerial science, it also offers the general public non-degree related courses of interest in an “a la carte” fashion, for “Special Registration Students” and in the form of “Corporate Training,” for example.

For such non-degree training, a large number of programs that offer academic credit with certification are provided in specific courses that may take only a few days to complete. People may then add their course completion information to their personal resumes. Many such business schools make vigorous efforts to provide this type of educational “retraining” to non-traditional students. The fact that famous overseas business schools offer this kind of non-degree training is mostly unknown in Japan. As a matter of fact, it is common for business schools to generate over 50% of their income from these kinds of non-degree courses and offerings.