Helping Students Choose Their Path

The core of AIU's career education is to encourage students to explore in depth how they want to live in the future based on a deep understanding of work and professions. This is why AIU offers a wide range of diverse career education.

After graduating from AIU, students have joined global companies and organizations. Their global perspectives based on solid liberal arts education, advanced communication skills, and the practical skills gained through their study abroad period have been highly recognized by recruiters of renowned corporations.

Some students advance to graduate schools in Japan or overseas. We believe that enabling students to use the four years at AIU to identify their interests, then to study specialized knowledge at a graduate school in their field of choice is precisely the role of liberal arts education.

For students entering the workforce, the Career Development Center offers individual support for each student who has found a solid goal and is working towards it. The Academic Career Support Center offers varied assistance to students aiming to enter a graduate school inside or outside Japan, or to become a highly specialized professional.

Academic Career Support Center (ACSC)

Career Support

Career Path Support

Career Development Center

There is a variety of support for students considering their career path, including career counseling, internships, and on-campus Company Presentation events by company HR recruiters. There are also active student-to-student consultation meetings regarding career and school choice. Students can find active support not only from faculty and staff but also from older students, and this is one benefit of the relationships built in a small student population and intimate campus environment.

Career Education as an Educational Curriculum

Career DesignCCS140 Career Design (Required)

The word career was originally used to refer to tracks left by a wheeled vehicle. You create something you can call your career as you try your hardest to make every day count.

Career design is a compulsory module at our university, and students start to think about their careers in their first year to develop their awareness of career opportunities. As soon as students begin their study at our university, we encourage them to think about how they can apply the knowledge and experience they gain in their courses and student life to the real world, as well as think about what kind of people they are and what makes them happy. We also encourage them to consider their career options from a broad perspective based on their self-understanding developed through knowledge and experience and help them choose their career paths.

Internships (Elective)

Internship periods range from two weeks to three months, and students do internships in various places, such as their hometowns, within Akita prefecture, or at companies, government agencies, international organizations and NGOs, in countries where they spend their year abroad.

1. Development of professional awareness and motivation
2. Improvement of communication skills
3. Improvement of adaptability to society
4. Enhancement of self-awareness
5. Improvement of motivation for participation in society

While working as interns, students observe carefully how organizations are managed, the way their workers think and behave, think about leadership, teamwork, and career based on their experience, and begin to brainstorm what career options they have.

Support

Akita International University provides a wide range of support including career guidance (orientation sessions), private consultations, adjustment with organizations accepting interns, preparation of agreements, management of diaries and reports, and creation and delivery of letters of appreciation. Students first identify their interests by self-analysis, focus on a few industries, and further analyze individual companies to find internship opportunities. In principle, students are responsible for finding organizations that offer internship programs on their own, but our Career Development Center also provides information when companies and organization wish to hire our students as interns.

Recognition of Credits

Internships may count as academic credits depending on journals and reports submitted by students as well as presentations of their experience.

Online Job Search Support System

Previously, the Career Development Center mainly provided face-to-face support for students’ job search, such as holding career workshops on campus. However, due to the spread of COVID-19, we have switched from face-to-face support to online support for students searching for new graduate jobs and are working to strengthen the support offered.

In particular, the introduction of the online interview service has enabled both companies and students to deepen their understanding of each other through the viewing of videos, thereby creating better opportunities for matching.

Together with career workshops held using web conferencing services, we have named it the “E-conne System” and are also promoting online job search support.