Minerva University Opens Rotation in JapanOpening ceremony held for 125 second-year students

In April 2024, The Nippon Foundation concluded a comprehensive tie-up agreement with Minerva University, which is based in San Francisco and has been named “the world’s most innovative university.”*  The agreement included the addition of Tokyo as a rotation city in which Minerva students will spend part of their four years of study, and a ceremony was held on September 5 to mark the launch of Tokyo as a rotation city.

The comprehensive agreement was made between The Nippon Foundation, Minerva University, and the general incorporated association Minerva Japan to prepare a syllabus and implementation program and make arrangements in areas including student housing, with a view toward beginning classes in September 2025.

Minerva students regularly move among major cities around the world to learn by working with or interning at local companies, governments, NGOs, and research institutes to address issues, with classes primarily held online. With this launch, Japan will become the eighth rotation city in this groundbreaking program, and the second after the United States where students can have an extended stay of up to one year.

In recent years, Japanese universities have been facing issues including “teaching to the test” and declining international competitiveness, and truancy and economic disparities are leading to a decrease in the percentage of high school graduates going on to university. The need for cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset has also been identified as an issue for Japanese high school education. In response, The Nippon Foundation has been developing initiatives to create new educational models in Japan, including the completely online ZEN University, which began offering classes in April 2025.

A total of 125 second-year Minerva students who are in Japan, from 40 countries and including 10 Japanese citizens, attended the ceremony. Program staff explained the significance of the tie-up and establishment of a base in Japan, as well as educational, economic, and other issues, and student representatives spoke about the program as well.

Minerva is committed to cultivating the next generation of leaders who will carry forward these lessons and build bridges of understanding and collaboration across the globe.

We intend to work proactively to create opportunities for Minerva’s students to interact with Japanese companies, local governments, and universities. I hope that students will use these first-hand opportunities to identify social issues, propose solutions, and share them with a broad audience.

Minerva not only gives us the skillset required but also esteemed platforms in many courses to execute those skills and create something more meaningful than just course credits. Even though it has barely been a week since I’ve been here, I already see the culture of discipline and respect in Japanese people. I really hope that while we work on cultural integration, we also adopt the virtues from locals around us and then spread them around the globe.

Coming from Spain with an Argentinian family, I’ve always navigated two cultural identities at once, and that has taught me how much we can grow when different values come into dialogue. Tokyo is an opportunity to bring Minerva’s global mindset into conversation with Japanese society, while also learning from Japan’s deep sense of community and respect.

I’m honored to be here as part of Minerva’s inaugural cohort in Japan. Being here with Minerva represents an opportunity to see Japan through fresh, objective eyes. I hope to explore critical social challenges that Japan faces, not just as someone who has lived here, but as a global citizen seeking solutions. I’m particularly excited about building bridges between Japanese innovation and Minerva’s global community.

Minerva University is a comprehensive four-year university established in San Francisco, and admitted its first class in September 2014. The university offers both an undergraduate and a master’s degree program, and has a diverse student community with roughly 90% of the student body coming from outside the United States, representing roughly 100 countries around the world. (As of August 31, 2025, the combined undergraduate and graduate student body totaled 624 students, including 34 Japanese citizens.)

The university was established with participation by deans from Harvard and other Ivy League universities, and since 2022 has been named “the world’s most innovative university” by World’s Universities with Real Impact (an organization whose partners include the United Nations Institute for Training and Research) for four consecutive years. Classes are taught using a proprietary online platform that allows students to participate from anywhere in the world. Undergraduate students spend their four years in multiple international cities, working on projects or as interns at local companies, NGOs, governments, and research institutes (a rotation program). This gives students practical experience that they would not get at a traditional university, cultivating human resources who are able to play an active role even in unfamiliar fields.