Chapter 3 outlined the achievements and challenges of the initiatives undertaken between AY 2022 and AY 2025, including academic reform, the advancement of research, globalization, student support, career development support, the visualization of learning and growth, and campus development. Through these initiatives, the environment supporting the learning, research, and student life of undergraduate and graduate students has expanded. However, important challenges remain, including how to connect the systems and opportunities that have been established to each individual’s sense of growth and how to link diverse experiences in meaningful ways.

Based on these achievements and challenges, this chapter presents key directions for education, research, and student life in the second half of R2030. Accordingly, we hope that the directions presented in this chapter will be viewed as material for discussion leading up to the Plenary Council, and that they will be considered in light of your own experiences and awareness of the issues involved. The directions presented in this chapter are also issues that should be examined together with undergraduate and graduate students when considering the role that Ritsumeikan University should play amid changes in society and higher education.

The nature of learning and student life at the university differs from one individual to another. Students who have just entered the university, upper-year students deepening their expertise, graduate students engaged in research, and working adult graduate students balancing their studies with work and family responsibilities all face different challenges and have different aspirations. With these diverse circumstances as its premise, this chapter outlines how the university will develop its environment and continue its dialogue with students.

It should be noted that the key initiatives presented in this chapter are not intended to simply list individual systems or programs. Rather, they are presented as points for discussion to help undergraduate and graduate students consider what kind of university Ritsumeikan University should become in the future through such efforts as advancing toward becoming a next-generation research university, fostering expertise and practical competencies in the age of AI, developing innovative and creative talent, promoting the globalization of education and research, increasing the number of students who challenge themselves abroad, creating multipurpose learning spaces, and redefining extracurricular and other non-curricular activities, including student-led extracurricular activities.