Aiming to Build Future Skills for Society 5.0: Educational DX (Digital Transformation) of University Education in Japan

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the concept of Society 5.0, which emerged in response to the current trend of rapid internationalization and globalization in Japan. Society 5.0 aims to improve the quality of people’s daily lives and make all diverse generations members of a “smart society” without leaving them behind. Higher education institutions (HEIs) will further promote close collaboration with industry and provide human resource development and education curricula that place the highest priority on the individual Future Skills needed by the rapidly changing society. In order to realize this new challenge, various urgent efforts are needed, including reform of university governance and introduction of curriculum design specialists into the institutional culture in Japan.

1 Introduction

There is a growing awareness in Japan of the critical need to promote the internationalization of universities (known as Internationalization at Home) with the purposeful integration of international and intercultural dimensions into the formal and informal curriculum for all students within domestic learning environments. This internationalization is undertaken to ensure that a wider range of people can readily engage with more international educational experiences, including opportunities to have cross-cultural encounters and to afford for greater skill development of intercultural competencies to better become global citizens through their university studies. To make this opportunity inclusive, rather than relying solely on traditional student mobility exchanges, it is important to harness the use of digital technology. In this paper, I would like to focus on the fact that Japanese higher education institutions (hereafter ‘HEIs’) which have gained a great deal of experience and lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, have finally upshifted their gears to actualize digital transformation (hereafter ‘DX’). The prospective of Japan’s transformation trend naturally foresees the ‘next stage’ of a post-pandemic future, with much advanced digitally enhanced infrastructure for every dimension of our lives.

One of the trends driving DX in Japanese university education is the promotion of building a next generation of society, namely “Society 5.0.” In its argument to promote this concept, it is perceived that the society will transform through a new phase with much acceleration in the coming years. The phase perhaps better and more popularly known as “Industry 4.0” (the fourth industrial revolution) in the other parts of the world has started around 2011, with the digitalization of manufacturing and production. The social infrastructure represented by efforts to visualize information and link it to new business models has been established. With regards to the Society 5.0 conceptualization, following on from the several years since Industry 4.0 was proposed in Germany in 2016 (European Parliament, 2016), Japan has come up with ‘Society 5.0.’ Japan describes its initiative in these terms as making a purposeful effort to create a new social ecosystem and an economic model case by fully incorporating the technological innovations of the fourth industrial revolution.

This chapter will first introduce the basic concept of Society 5.0, describing what it captures as the design of the near-future society we are heading towards. It then ties the concept with the challenges and opportunities which Japan potentially holds to realize such a society. Finally, it revisits how higher education must be actively involved in producing the “agents” of Society 5.0 through their university curricula with an emphasis on the point that transformation of education, or paradigm shift in mindset in HEIs, is inevitable. This is precisely done in order to assure future ready skills that are seen as even more necessary graduate attributes of their students.

2 Emergence of the “Society 5.0” Concept

Society 5.0 was proposed in the 5th Science and Technology Basic Plan (Cabinet Office Japan, 2015) as representing a future society that Japan could and should aspire to. It follows from the development of the so-called hunting society (Society 1.0), agricultural society (Society 2.0), industrial society (Society 3.0), and information society (Society 4.0). Figure 28.1, adopted from the Keidanren (Japan Economic Organization) homepage, illustrates the increment of society in different stages thus far.

Fig. 28.1

Evolution of Societies up to Society 5.0 (Keidanren, 2016)

Digital transformation will dramatically change many aspects of society. It touches on private lives, public administration, industrial infrastructure, and education. Society 5.0 addresses several key pillars: infrastructure improvement, a rise of industries with tech-advanced system such as finance tech, agriculture tech, ed tech, healthcare, logistics, and widely used AI. AI exerts its capabilities not just in cyberspace, but in the physical world through robots. AI and robots will replace or support humans in carrying out routine tasks, for example with a transition in public transportation to the use of autonomous driving. We already have seen some realizations of these transformations in daily living, and it is likely such transformations will occur with greater frequency and across broader domains of activity. Distributed ledger technology in finance tech is worth remarking upon here, with such ledger technologies as blockchain representing possible improvements in transaction efficacy with a high level of transparency and reliability.

Finance technology, IoT (Internet of Things), AI, and robotics—the emergence of such technologies may fundamentally transform the way in which societies operate. As indicated in the figure above, Society 5.0 reflects on such emergence. It is called a super smart society, meaning that it not only uses information and communication technologies (ICT) to increase operational efficiency, share information with the public and improve both the quality of government services and citizen welfare, but also features higher degrees of integration, better collaboration, and value maximization. While digital transformation brings a new stage of society, it is also important that technologies and data are used so that people can pursue diverse and enriched lifestyles in their own ways. In realizing this increased diversity, the Basic Plan report states Society 5.0 requires rich imaginations to identify a variety of needs and challenges scattered throughout society, then come up with scenarios to solve the challenges creatively utilizing available digital technologies. Here, Society 5.0 is conceived as a product of the combination of DX with the imagination and creativity of diverse people (Keidanren, 2017).

Why is Society 5.0 important for a country like Japan? There are many reasons, but one significant example is that Japan is a rapidly aging country, and it needs innovative solutions to deal with rapidly occurring demographic changes. In 2050, an estimated 40 percent of the population will be 65 years and older, while the average life expectancy in Japan is now reaching 85 years. In such a “super-aging” society, challenges will not only be to have enough caretaking, but there needs to be ways to develop new pharmaceuticals or assist systems for the elderly to stay independent. With the lowering birthrate, the workforce population is declining. The rate of underpopulation is indeed hard to ignore. For example, the Japanese birthrate fell below 2 (births/woman) in 1975, hit a low of 1.3 in 2005, and has been as low as 1.4 from then until now (Cabinet Office Japan, 2019; Kato, 2018). One of the negative impacts of such demographic changes is increasing economic stagnation. The Japanese economy grew by less than 2% in 2017 for the sixth year in a row (UNESCO, 2019), due to ever-intensifying global competition, the changing structure of value creation in the new digital economy, shrinking population and ageing, and growing fiscal pressure from rising government expenditure on social security.

To compensate for these disadvantages, technology is seen as one way to remedy the challenge. Japan is already famous for its robot developments, and in Society 5.0 smart robotics are also seen as a key player to provide solutions. As assist systems could enable a prolonged independent life, robots can take over work in elderly care. And finally, AI can help to develop new pharmaceutical drugs as well as support elderly people in everyday life. While information society (in Society 4.0) enabled humans to access information from anywhere in the world, with AI innovation (in Society 5.0), people can gain ready access to a high level of abilities from anywhere (i.e., conceptualized as “distribution and commoditization of abilities”) and this affordance will drastically enhance individual capabilities beyond what had been thought plausible. This means that digitalization and DX will not leave anyone behind with technological advancement facilitating and easing the use of technology by everyday citizens.

What does it look like in a more practical sense? A UNESCO online article (2019) illustrates some specific illustrations of how a life would look like in Society 5.0. In Society 5.0, autonomous vehicles and drones will bring goods and services to people in depopulated areas. A doctor will be able to consult her patients in the comfort of their own home via a special tablet, and medication will be delivered to them instantly. A robot may be vacuuming the carpet in a house. At the nursing home down the road, another robot may be helping to care for the aged ones. In the nursing home’s kitchen, the refrigerator will be monitoring the condition of stocked foods to cut down on waste. The town will be powered by energy supplied in flexible and decentralized ways to meet the inhabitants’ specific needs. On the outskirts, autonomous tractors will be toiling in the fields while in downtown, advanced cyber-physical systems will be maintaining vital infrastructure and standing by to replace retiring technicians and craftspeople, should there not be enough young people to fill the gap.

3 Aiming Global Employability for Society 5.0: New Pedagogy Through Education DX

While Society 5.0 sounds like a well-served philosophy, implementation of it as outcome (the goal) through actions will come with some challenges. There are some obstacles to realize this social transformation. Among various challenges, Keidanren points out lack of qualified personnel pools in order to bring out Society 5.0. This is a rather critical aspect to take up for educators at HEIs. What Future Skills will the people in Society 5.0 need, particularly those who would become the main players to run the new ecosystem? In other words, we can elaborate to say that what is at stake here is to redefine (global) employability for Society 5.0; regardless of types of industry, an attractive future hire would require the ability to adapt to a rapidly changing world. They would also need to have a more complex level of understanding of information science so that they are able to stay productive and creative in their professions. What kind of education/training will be then expected at HEIs in Japan to meet these expectations? Are the Japanese HEIs ready to generate “future ready” graduates?

Smith et al. (2018) have defined that employability is not an outcome, but a process, and skills to facilitate the individual to employ their abilities in lifelong and life-wide contexts for private and public good are desired by future employers. Education must give students the skills to both cope with that changing society and, furthermore, for them to embrace and lead that change (Future Skills). One challenge will be to train enough IT engineers to drive Society 5.0. The Council for Science, Technology and Innovation (CSTI) estimates that by 2030, the IT industry will be short of 789,000 talents. This figure was released by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (Cabinet Office Japan, 2019).

Society 5.0 will demand multiple employability dimensions. Some of the illustrations can be shared here. In 2018, MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) has issued a vision statement on human resources and forms of learning (“Building upon discussions in Minister’s Meeting on Human Resource Development for Society 5.0”). In the document, the skills needed to discover and create leaps in knowledge towards technological innovation and to create new values were emphasized. To do so, they list the ability to accurately interpret and respond to writing and information, the ability to engage in and apply scientific thinking and inquiry, curiosity, and inquisitiveness to be of essential quality. All these represent important Future Skills in Society 5.0. Qasrawi and BeniAbdelrahman (2020) have proposed that Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) should be a priority at HEIs to cultivate the skills requested. HOTS is an over-average cognitive thinking approach developed from cognitive concepts and methods. More precisely, HOTS comprises problem-solving, taxonomic flourishing and taxonomy learning.

In 2017, Society 5.0 took on a new significance by making a major contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Keidanren even revised its Charter of Corporate Behavior in November 2017, calling for member corporations to proactively deliver on the SDGs through the realization of Society 5.0. Adopting goals that matter to all people in the world into the concept, Society 5.0’s conceptualization further promotes global corporations to realize its targeted outcome. Naturally, those who become key players to make changes towards it must develop not just local employability but global employability. Candidates with soft skills and cross-cultural understanding and tolerance are qualities that are required for bridging the gap across cultural boundaries. Fostering learning attitudes which show a strong willingness to learn and constantly invest in new knowledge building is also highly valued (PwC, 2022). A powerful trend in Japanese HEIs in recent years has been the emphasis on global human resources, or in other words, people who have no difficulty in working transnationally. Traditionally, the Japanese have been conscious that international interaction is not their strength, largely due to their poor English (Sato & Arimoto, 2015). For quite some time, Japanese universities have been making it a priority to educate students in today’s global context and to enroll international students. Due to the COVID-19 impact, and with a growing awareness of the importance of digital technology and online education modalities, I will highlight some of the efforts to nurture global employability at HEIs in aiming to meet the human resource demands for Society 5.0. Future Skills must thus relate to a global context and, in this approach, be reflective of the Sustainable Development Goals—and their promotion must be inclusive.

At Kansai University, a private comprehensive university with a student body of approximately 30,000 in the west of Japan (Osaka), an online symposium on Educational DX in Higher Education¹ was recently held dealing with the theme of what aims a university should focus on in any process of transformation. The keynote speaker, Dr. Toru Iiyoshi of Kyoto University, began by stating that it is important for education to be DX (as in “deluxe”) (i.e., it should seek to spread and expand) through DX (as in “digital transformation”). The symposium considered that the significance of educational DX is not to simply use advanced digital technology, or opt for online education because of the pandemic impact, but to employ digital technology and online modalities to encourage socially engaged and innovative processes of learning and promote Future Skills. The pedagogy at HEIs will need an upgrade or even further, a paradigm shift from the conventional education.

What would happen if we shed the light of possibility of DX here? Not all problems will be solved, but issues of distance and traveling cost, as just one example, can be alleviated by enabling coordinated activities online. It would also be possible to use on-demand and social apps to enable high school students to learn and, if they wish, communicate with learning content provided by universities, even when there are different times available for participation. Furthermore, with this concept, there is no need to keep the connectivity within the single country. It would also be possible to practice multiple university collaborations among global south-to-south countries, or global south-to-north regions, and so on. Equitable and inclusive international education has not been particularly successful until now, without having to travel abroad or have offshore campuses involved. Yet with DX, HEIs in isolated regions such as islands or rural areas of a country can now also be a part of active participation. The developmental realization of education beyond any conventional modality is the ‘DX/deluxe of education’, and DX (digital transformation) is what makes this possible.

As a case in point, Fig. 28.2 illustrates a global smart classroom at Kansai University, launched in March 2021. In this classroom, students can either be present on-site or participate online. There are sensitive ceiling microphone panels installed, so the students do not need to use individual microphones or speak loudly in order to hear and be heard well by the remote participants. A special application called CLASS is in use for the class conduct, in which multiple camera projections of image can be broadcast at the same time. The instructor, together with the students in the classroom, has access to a rich source of information to make themselves feel immersed in one shared space, no matter where they join from. The interactive support functions designed in the application facilitate further participation as well. In Society 5.0, no one should be left behind, and the sky should be the only limit to generate innovative and creative collaborative pedagogies with our technology. This environment was created to strengthen the student experience in a hyflex mode of classroom, connecting both those online and internationally participating, as well as those who are on campus. The impact by alternating to an online mode of international education has contributed to reducing inequality in internationalization by reaching out to more students from a wider range of regions, more global south allies than global north, through the use of virtual exchanges, collaborative online learning, and the explicit internationalization of the curriculum/at home.

Fig. 28.2

Global Smart Classroom (GSC) at Kansai University

When we bring an equity mindset to digitally transforming the education, those who gain more may be the ones who actually “give” and “share.” Going into the 3^rd year of the pandemic phase, many educators have had a recognition that teaching online does not mean simply recording a traditional lecture and posting it to the web or using a videoconference platform to deliver the same lecture online as the instructor would give on campus.

Effective online education requires teaching and learning methods that engage students dynamically in an enjoyable and stimulating education experience. Interaction and engagement are closely related and even used interchangeably. Student engagement is developed through interaction (Anderson, 2003), and fostering interaction is important in online learning. Engagement strategies must be embedded in online modes of pedagogy, to provide positive learner experiences including active learning opportunities, such as participating in collaborative group work, having students facilitate presentations and discussions, sharing resources actively, creating course assignments with hands- on components, and integrating case studies and reflections. For example, in a survey-based study, Martin and Bolliger (2018) found that icebreaker/introduction discussions and working collaboratively using online communication tools were rated the most beneficial engagement strategies in the learner-to-learner modes of learning activities. They also found that students mentioned working on real-world projects and having discussions with structured or guiding questions were the most beneficial. Utilizing education technology and digitally enhanced classrooms can bring out enriched social engagement in the learning process.

Digital transformation for education, as a part of the Society 5.0 picture, does not just stop at adopting simple e-learning modalities. Goger et al. (2022) consider how learning processes and modalities have evolved rapidly, possibly accelerated by the pandemic impact. The HEIs modes of teaching and learning now show Phase 2.0 mainly, meaning that for conceptual and foundational learning, online courses and remote instruction via video conferencing tools are the dominant cases. More recent technologies have come about, such as machine learning, learning platforms, virtual reality, and distributed ledger technologies including blockchain, and these have enabled many more fundamental shifts in how education functions. Technology advancement today is about to take us to a next phase, Education 3.0. The centralized, traditional education model today will be no longer sustainable in the near future. Learning happens increasingly outside the brick-and-mortar classrooms, but on online platforms, and people will start learning among the communities of the same needs, not necessarily those being one’s school mates. Learning will be far more international than it used to be then. Students travel to different countries to improve their employability prospects by getting trained by various education providers. Given this projection in the future, we can clearly see that HEIs, in Japan and elsewhere, do not really have much affordance of time to resist the changes. This educational model thus engages students in an inclusive way to make Future Skills learning more accessible.

4 Challenges Ahead for Japan: Socio-Cultural Conservative Mindset as a “Pull” Factor

The pandemic undoubtedly led to a switch to online courses, but once things settled down the number of institutions switching to face-to-face courses increased across the board, and as of 2022 only a small percentage of institutions are maintaining and offering online courses. There are a variety of factors contributing to this face-to-face approach, but the most significant “pull” factor is the lack of trust in communication through digital communication technology. It is true that all the educational practices with digital technologies and internet connectivity should be further promoted in higher education today, yet at the same time all of them present challenges for those who are familiar with the conventional methods, which presumes education takes place in a brick-and-mortar classroom setting.

For instance, despite the renewed spread of the coronavirus, about 70% of the nation’s 23 top universities have increased the ratio of face-to-face classes in the 2021 academic year compared to 2020 (Endo & Lee, 2021). The 23 institutions are former Japanese imperial universities such as the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University, and renowned private universities such as Waseda and Keio universities. According to the same survey report, at Waseda University, about 70% of students who responded to an interview survey requested face-to-face classes. “There is a clash between increasing students’ opportunities to come to school and thoroughly preventing infection” (ibid.), a school representative said. Similarly, many universities have switched to face-to-face classes even though there is no prospect of controlling the infection, they are concerned about students feeling isolated.

5 The “Push” Factors

There are some efforts to counteract the pulling factors at a national level. On January 7, 2022, the Japanese government released the “Roadmap for the Utilization of Educational Data”, a 53-page document outlining an ambitious plan to harness information and communications technology to create “a society where anyone can learn in their own way, anytime, anywhere, with anyone” (Digital Agency Japan, 2022). They propose that they will realize the roadmap by 2030. The scope of this proposal is wide, extending to lifelong and recurrent education. The focus is on the creation of a school learning environment that makes optimal use of digital technology to shift from the teacher-centered, “chalk and talk” mode of instruction to a more personalized, interactive, and self-directed learning experience (Matsumoto, 2022).

At the higher educational level, a proposal to exceptionally relax credit limits for online classes at Japanese universities under certain conditions, currently set at 60 of the 124 credits required for graduation, was recently approved by a working team of the education minister’s advisory body (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, 2022). The reasons behind this push are diverse, but a few aspects worth remarking on here are prominent. The first is the significant paucity of incoming international students to educational institutions in the country. The more online classes are offered, the easier it will be for students in China, South Korea, and Southeast Asia, where the time difference with Japan is minimal, to “attend” classes at Japanese universities from their home countries. The cost required for their registration to a foreign institution will be reduced, thus it can provide a much wider population of students with opportunities to “study (virtually) abroad.” Following the blended mobility framework that has been well adopted by European Commission’s Erasmus+, Japan can also propose a combination of online and on-site learning at a university. Those who may not be able to afford the time and money for a full degree abroad can now consider undertaking a blended program provided the physical mobility component can be reduced in length.

Another reason is ease of management. For a large-scale university like Kansai University, maintenance of multiple large lecture halls (up to 1,000-person capacity) with air conditioning can use considerable electricity every day. By shifting the focus to online classes, large lecture halls may no longer be needed, leading to eased regulations on physical space such as site and building area. It also contributes towards SDGs by cutting down on energy consumption of large buildings on campus.

The third reason is most relevant to the discussion at stake in this paper; the need for digital literacy improvement is recognized now as an essential foundation for graduate attributes or Future Skills. Online class experience enables strengthening students’ digital competence. Multi-lateralized learning, in which students can study specialized subjects in their pursuing discipline while simultaneously developing soft skills such as digital literacy will be actively encouraged in the future. The Japan Business Association (Keidanren) agrees, and they have called for the upper limit’s removal in a January 2022 proposal so that students have access to flexible learning opportunities. The education ministry will continue discussing specific requirements for receiving the special exception and aims to revise the Standards for the Establishment of Universities by the end of academic year 2022. The transformation of work styles has already begun in Japan. The pandemic has certainly altered working sentiments. The country’s willingness to change their ways is worth a remark to project a possible workplace dynamic of the future. According to a survey undertaken by Hays Japan, Asia prioritizes getting everyone on board the digitalization journey, to implement flexibility and encourage trust within employees who are working remotely. Additionally, the proliferation of remote working has exacerbated the need for remote orientation and remote leadership training (Hays, 2021, p. 46).

Commonly in Asia and elsewhere, e-learning represents a fast-growing space, with schools at various levels now looking at incorporating this into their curriculums. One of the most recent responses by HEIs in Japan has been the establishment of a cross-institutionally operated virtual learning platform called “Japan Virtual Campus (JV-Campus)”. MEXT (Education ministry in Japan) has funded the platform and a total of 19 university projects are using it to offer their education programs to overseas as well as domestic student population cross-institutionally (Fig. 28.3).

Fig. 28.3

Japan Virtual Campus (University of Tsukuba, 2023)

Many of these programs are free of charge and available to anyone regardless of where they reside. Another feature about the education programs on the JV-Campus is that many of them are not given official credentials provided by a university. The length of learning planned for each program is relatively shorter than what is offered in a regular semester. This is intentional since the administration of JV-Campus is planning to implement a micro-credential system to advance the value of learning in the very near future, which will lead to upskilling and reskilling education for various targets, such as prospective university students (from abroad or high schools within Japan), those who seek for new skill developments for career change, and/or those who wish to improve their skills needs to sustain their professions in business.

With a rapid shift in a workforce portfolio due to changing new business models and corporate strategies for Society 5.0, education and capacity building trainings for continuous learning regardless of their formal degree is high on demand in Japan, similarly to the rest of the world. In addition to macro-degrees, such as university degrees, micro-degrees obtained from micro-credentials and digital badge certificates will be given further acknowledgement to add value to one’s employability.

6 Consequences of Skill Needs from the Reform Strategy

A report issued in 2020 by METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) in Japan has clearly pointed out that companies need to modify their approaches to human capital management and their relationship with individuals according to changes in society and make a shift to an open and equal relationship with the aim of creating value, regardless of past successes (see Fig. 28.4).

Fig. 28.4

Direction of Reformation for corporate strategy for human capital (adopted from METI, 2020)

The Report of the Study Group on Improvement of Sustainable Corporate Value and Human Capital (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, 2020) as summarized in Fig. 28.4, emphasizes that the COVID-19 crisis is a good opportunity for questioning “common knowledge,” resisting “inertial thinking” and initiating a movement for significant change. Corporate strength to transform will generate divides between companies who can make a creative and flexible transformation to make the maximum use of human capital and companies who cannot.

As shown in the above figure, people strategies of companies need to enable new business models and corporate strategies to be implemented, in order to lead to an improvement of sustainable corporate value—and the strategies can also promote Future Skills development of the employees. For this purpose, the report points out that the executive team of a company, in particular the CHRO (Chief Human Resource Officer), should take the initiative to formulate a people strategy, and core members (5Cs: CEO [Chief Executive Officer], CSO [Chief Strategy Officer], CHRO, CFO [Chief Financial Officer] and CDO [Chief Digital Officer]) of the executive team need to work together to implement the strategy. There are some specific contents of this people strategy worth remarking upon here. The report says a new workforce portfolio allows a diverse range of individuals to play an active role, and such a portfolio (named as “dynamic workforce portfolio”) realizes diversity and inclusion of knowledge and experiences of individuals. The strategy promises re-skilling and continuous learning to fill a gap between skills for realizing the future vision and the current skills. With the diverse talents to be embraced, the factor of working without constraints in terms of time and place is given more importance as well, especially due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Traditionally, Japanese companies have been operating in a closed community whose members remain unchanged, locked personnel. The belief behind this is that career development is supposed to be led by companies, but not by individuals. A closed network will end up in a rather homogeneous like-minded community. With the right transformation being pursued, individuals will become autonomous and proactive and have an equal relationship with companies, instead of locking-in individuals. For this to be realized, each company needs to promote a community of diverse and open employment practices based on mutual selection by companies and individuals (Fig. 28.5). A focus should be placed on external competitive strength (Future Skills) of the individual candidates, regardless of educational paths.

Fig. 28.5

Necessary change in a community of employment practices (Adopted by METI, 2020)

This personnel strategy reform certainly looks at Society 5.0 as providing the next context for the prospective human resources as projected in the report. To meet the industry expectations, Japan’s educational models must seek a radical paradigm shift. Reflecting on this direction of transformation, the educational sector is also responsible to change its scheme of operation drastically. Competency-driven, inter-operable educational design with other education providers and institutions overseas should be the core curriculum at HEIs, instead of summative assessments to evaluate students on paper tests for a letter grade, which is only reputed by a specific university system. Flexible routes of education should be given more credit, allowing more student population to appreciate opportunities for higher learning and Future Skills development. Adopting new dynamics such as micro-credentialing is one of such efforts.

7 Conclusion

In this paper, I have explored various new trends for Japanese HEIs with regards to (i) internationalization, (ii) digitalization and digital transformation, and (iii) curriculum transformation to better meet the demands for the next phase “Society 5.0”. The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly stimulated and convinced various stakeholders that this is an inevitable change. While there are many “pull” factors ahead, there are also “push” factors to strongly proceed with new ways. Perhaps the strongest push factor among many would be from pressure generated by private sectors. The industry sees the world demands with up-to-speed pacing, whereas the educational sectors tend to stay in their own bubbles (or “ivory towers”) and miss out a chance to realize them. A Society 5.0 conceptualization assumes a backcasting approach, which is a planning that starts with defining a desirable future and works backwards to identify an (educational) program design to take place at present. In other words, it aims to generate a future ready skill set and mindset, i.e., Future Skills development. It is highly important and essential for the HEIs to attend to other sectors' actions sensitively and seek out to establish a multidimensional collaboration with them.

Future Skills in Practice: Our Recommendations

Suggestion 1. Build Multiple Communication Channels Across Different Sectors

Future Skills dynamics desired in different sectors may be different from each other. In order to have an accurate grasp of the needs, consistent communication among the sectors is essential.

Suggestion 2. Work with Professional Instructional Designers and Curriculum Advisors

For HEIs to design a successful and effective curriculum to build students’ Future Skills, professional assistance is most desired. For many Japanese HEIs, typically, ID professionals are not on campus. Generating such a new role in a HEI is an urgent action on demand.

Suggestion 3. Work on the Governance and Institutional Culture to Dynamically Change Educational Curriculum According to the Needs of the Society

Perhaps the most challenging mission is to transform the HEI culture to become willing to stay flexible and ready to change its educational curriculum. The whole governance ecosystem may need to be addressed to enable the changes.