ニューズウィーク国際版２００３年９月１５日号の大学教育特集Learning the Hard Way (Barbara Kantrowitz著)で金沢工業大学の夢考房が以下のように紹介されています。文中のFactory for Dreams and Ideasが夢考房の英訳、KITは金沢工業大学の略称です。なお、KITは商標登録されています。
“In Japan, a once obscure regional technical institute has emerged as a role model. The Kanazawa Institute of Technology doesn’t yet have the prestige of Tokyo or Waseda Universities, but it does boast that 99 percent of its students have jobs before graduation—a remarkable statistic in a slow economy. The transformation began more than a decade ago, when KIT officials began sending groups of professors and staffers to major U.S. universities to study how things were done. By the mid-1990s KIT launched a reform plan that emphasized hands-on experiences. At the Factory for Dreams and Ideas, students build projects like a robot that shoots basketballs or a solar-powered car. There are also close ties with Japanese industry, an important source of additional funding. The school has launched its own company to commercialize its research and development.”
“As higher education becomes more of a global commodity in the next few decades, it’s likely that new ideas like the provo or KIT’s Factory for Dreams and Ideas will inspire professors and students far from their original shores.”
夢考房のことを他大学の先生方に話すとその有用性を認められますが、なかなか自分の大学で実施するとなるといろいろな利害関係が働き難しいようです。強力なリーダのもとトップダウンでないと夢考房のような教育システムの実現は困難です。
