Japanese College of Technology (known as “KOSEN”) for engineering education, starting at the age of 15, is a Japan’s original tertiary education school established during rapid economic growth in the 1960s. At present, there are 51 national KOSEN colleges operated under the National Institute of Technology (NIT), 3 prefectural/municipal colleges, and 3 private colleges. The KOSEN’s consistent 5-year college engineering education and additional 2-year advanced course education (5+2 = 7 years) including academic research work enables the students to be practical engineers, effectively. Although KOSEN’s curricula have provided sufficient learning opportunity for the students to study theoretical knowledge and to conduct scientific/engineering experiments and workshop training as well as research work to foster practical manufacturing skills of students, KOSEN education also faces various challenges in the globalized world. In order to improve the preparation of KOSEN students to meet high demands in a rapidly changing world, NIT has to improve the curriculum as well as educational approaches. Since AY2018, NIT has implemented an innovative curriculum called “Model Core Curriculum (MCC)” that provides a framework for teaching, learning contents and outcomes levels in major engineering fields as a minimum standard for NIT’s KOSEN. In addition to professional skills, generic skills are also defined as one of the most important outcomes of teaching and learning through the MCC. In this research, NIT’s MCC is compared to the CDIO standard and syllabus to clarify the similarity and difference between NIT’s KOSEN education and the CDIO initiative. It is shown that the MCC well covers and matches with most of the items in CDIO standard and syllabus. This is due to that KOSEN education focuses on “Monodzukuri” and research work that require engineering design approach and C-D-I-O process. The details of the comparison between NIT’s KOSEN MCC and CDIO, including mapping of criteria and subjects according to educational outcomes and standards and how the MCC works in NIT’s KOSEN education are presented.
