Congratulations on your admission to university. You have completed your primary education, starting at primary school, and secondary education at junior high and high school, and proceeded to the final stage at an institution of higher education. Depending on where you went, adding together your time in preschool at nursery school or kindergarten, compulsory education at primary and junior high school, and high school, you have already received 15 years of education. Now, you are going to add another four years. There is also the next level of university education, 2-5 years at graduate school, so some of you will continue your student lives for another nine years.

You are all standing at the start of the final stage of higher education. Sometimes people say that studying at university is of no use, or you won’t struggle in life by not going to university, but they are only excuses hiding their true feelings of not wanting to study. I don’t think we should forget that higher education has provided (and still provides) vital contributions to the development of society and growth of human race.

If you tasted a certain amount of hardship during secondary education, you need to think that the hardship you experience will not be less in higher education. However, higher education is centered on proactive and independent learning, so you will experience new discoveries and achievement in your own way, and experience joy that will overshadow the hardship.

Will the next four years simply end in hardship? That depends on how proactively and independently you tackle the issues and problems at university. We want to support all of you over the next four years.