UN University

Japanese Education System

Q：What kind of university is the United Nations University?

A：The United Nations University (UNU) was established in 1975 as a UN global think tank, with the aim of contributing to efforts to resolve the pressing global problems that are concern of the United Nations and Member States. At the 64th session of the United Nations General Assembly in 2009, a resolution adopted by UN Member States to amend the Charter of the United Nations University enabled UNU to grant and confer Master’s degrees and Doctorates. Following this decision, in Japan, Master’s and Doctoral programmes are offered at the UNU Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability which was established at the UNU headquarters in Tokyo which encompasses 13 institutes around the world, as of June 2026. (It operates outside the jurisdiction of the School Education Act of Japan).

Meanwhile, Article 156, item (iv) of the Enforcement Regulation for the School Education Act stipulates that a person who has completed a course of the UNU and has been granted a degree equivalent to a Master's degree is considered as having academic ability equivalent to a person who holds a Master's degree awarded by a Japanese university, and therefore satisfies entrance qualification for Doctoral courses.

Also, then National Institution for Academic Degrees and University Evaluation (NIAD-UE) conducted the Third-Party Evaluation in 2014/15 and concluded that the UNU Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability met the Standards for Evaluation and Accreditation set by the Institution.

NIAD-UE deemed the UNU Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability as meeting the Standards for University Evaluation by reviewing and evaluating the university against the same standards following the same procedure as applied to Japanese universities.