Two Latter-Day Models of an International University

Abstract

Two universities may serve today as models of the kind and degree of international and comparative study necessary to improve higher education. First, the original Soka University in Japan, founded in 1971, and second, the Soka University of America, opened 30 years later in 2001 as a four-year liberal arts college. Drawing on the many years of work and experience of two professors and administrators at the two universities, this chapter aims to portray their separate but related globalization processes, strategies, and actions with essential lessons for universities worldwide seeking to educate for global citizenship. The diversity and the similarity in each university's views of what encompasses a philosophically sound and yet practically effective education for global citizenship (EGC) can serve as a bellwether for the efforts of other colleges and universities to promote this type of schooling.