——To begin, please offer a little background about Sophia University.

HIROSATO; Sophia University was founded 110 years ago, in 1913, by three Jesuit priests. It is a comprehensive university with nine faculties and 29 departments at the undergraduate level, as well as 10 graduate schools with 28 programs at the post-graduate level. It offers language courses in 22 different languages Sophia enjoys the support of global networks cultivated since its establishment. It has alliances with 398 universities in 83 countries. Each year, over 1,000 Sophia students (about 12% of all students) study abroad and over 1,200 international students, (about 10% of students) study at Sophia, all on one campus. (Figures as of May 1, 2022)

——It’s reported that more than 50 Japanese universities have their overseas offices in Thailand. Given that Sophia has so many international students, it’s surprising that it is a relative latecomer to Thailand.

HIROSATO; Of course, we’ve had tie-ups with universities in Southeast Asia and accepted many international students from the region for a long time. However, it’s true that we’ve been quite passive. Our challenge now is to raise Sophia’s profile across the whole of Southeast Asia.

——In 2015 you set up the Sophia ASEAN Hub Center at Chulalongkorn University. Then in 2019, you reorganized this into a commercial venture focused on education and training. You also relocated the office from Chulalongkorn University to Asoke, in the heart of the Bangkok central business district.

HIROSATO; The economic power of Southeast Asia is rising steadily. In Thailand, for example, many companies are already paying higher salaries at the general manager level than companies in Japan. The parents of today are highly motivated to educate their children, leading to a strong interest in overseas study programs. To encourage outstanding students and their parents to consider Sophia, we needed a local base. The launch of the ASEAN Community in 2015 was another factor. We decided to set up a hub for education, research and student exchanges to serve the whole Mekong region, headquartered in Bangkok, where there was already a concentration of international organizations and university networks, such as the Asia-Pacific regional offices of the U.N. agencies and other global bodies such as the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization and the ASEAN University Network. The Asoke area is convenient because it is close to many of the overseas offices of other Japanese universities and agencies, including the Japan Foundation, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Japan International Cooperation Agency, Kyoto University, Meiji University and Osaka University, which makes it easy for us to interact. However, most universities outsource the recruitment of international students to specialist firms. At the same time, most of the universities that have waded into the local market do not have corporate status, so they are not legally permitted to make profits. Education and training programs cover a wide range of activities, not only recruitment of foreign students but also study tour programs and professional training. This means that unless it is possible to undertake for-profit activities, the scope of a university’s operations will be limited. We decided to set up as a private company so that we can engage in a wider variety of educational activities. This is the first attempt by a Japanese university to operate on a commercial basis in Thailand.

——What kind of activities is Sophia GED engaging in?

HIROSATO; In our first year, 2019, we held a symposium at the Siam Society under Royal Patronage to commemorate its establishment. That same year, we invited Ms. Cherprang Areekul (captain of the popular Thai idol group BNK48), a recent graduate of Mahidol University International College, to a talk session event at Sophia University on the theme of youth commitment to SDGs. We also conducted practice-based study tours such as Northern Thailand: Service Learning Program and Mekong Economic Corridor Study Tour (overland visits to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam). The participating students, who visited special economic zones and Japanese companies, infrastructure facilities, urban slums, international organizations, research institutes, universities and other tertiary institutions, and historical and cultural heritage sites, were encouraged to identify issues and challenges and propose any solutions to them.

——In late March 2020, Thailand declared a state of emergency in response to COVID-19, resulting in the closure of international borders and flight bans.

HIROSATO; Since it became impossible to continue running study tours, which was our main business, in April we started doing everything online. Firstly, we launched World Inquiry Club, a 10-month learning program aimed at offering inquiry-based learning to Japanese high school students in Japan and abroad. The students were asked to write an academic-style research paper on any event, phenomenon or theme of interest they had discovered for themselves not only on Southeast Asia, but also on the rest of the world. A total of 122 high school students participated in the program over the past three years. Their papers (mostly in Japanese, some in English) can be read on the Sophia GED website (https://jp.sophia-ged.com/). I’m convinced that learning how to write academic papers in high school, especially through practice, has a very positive impact on later learning. We are also running a high school-university collaborative program. Sophia GED Programme Director Erika Atarashi (a specially appointed assistant professor at Sophia University), offers Creating Inquiry-based Learning as a regular course at Sophia.

Sophia students taking this class join up with members of the World Inquiry Club for collaborative classes. The Sophia students, including some graduates of the World Inquiry Club, also serve as mentors, which helps them to develop leadership skills.

Another one of our online programs, Learning from Southeast Asia: Creating Together Resilient and Sustainable Future Society, was attended by approximately 180 students from Sophia University, Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines, Mahidol University in Thailand, Xavier Learning Community (XLC:, a special higher education institution established by the Jesuits in the outskirts of Chiang Rai, Thailand for students from hill tribe ethnic minorities), and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Together with Sophia University’s Human Resources Center for International Cooperation, we also organized the Training Course for Professionals at International Organizations based in Bangkok (10 sessions), designed for Japanese professionals. With Panyapiwat Institute of Management, a corporate university established by CP ALL, a subsidiary company of the C.P. Group, one of Thailand’s leading conglomerates, we jointly planned and coordinated an online Entrepreneurship and Leadership Development Program.

——Did you stop your study abroad programs completely?

HIROSATO; No we did not. In response to the pandemic, we simply switched to online programs. For example, in collaboration with Chiba University, which is committed to study abroad for all of its students, the Thailand Online Study Abroad Program were held five times for the entire university, and twice for students of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences in 2021 and 2022. With the return of international travel at the end of the 2022 academic year, we started running our Thailand Study Abroad Program (with real travel) in February and March 2023. At the same time, as part of Sophia’s practice-based Learning from Southeast Asia program, Sophia students stayed at XLC in the outskirts of Chiang Rai to collaborate with students from local hill tribe minorities in studying economic and social issues affecting northern Thailand. For the foreseeable future, both real and online activities will be possible, but given that the WHO declared on May 5, 2023 that COVID-19 is no longer a “public health emergency of international concern,” we are hopeful that the problems of the pandemic are well and truly behind us. We are all looking forward to resuming our core business of face-to-face practice-based study tours and short-term study abroad programs in earnest.

——During the pandemic, Sophia GED ran online study abroad programs and an inquiry-based learning program for high school students. Do you have any other projects on the drawing board?

HIROSATO; We are starting to cultivate alliances with numerous schools and to plan collaborations with school-affiliated corporations. It will be a challenge to bring these projects to fruition, but I’m also thinking of offering a preparatory program for Thai students going to study in Japan and running study tours in regions and countries we haven’t gone to before. I would also like to offer a Southeast Asia tour for executives of Japanese companies because there are so many places here where it’s possible to observe SDGs and well-being in action. To nurture a seed for future growth, we are also working with the Sophia Start-up Club, an entrepreneurship club at the university, to develop a proposal for an overseas startup venture competition in which Japanese and Southeast Asian students work together.

I also want to see stronger collaboration between Sophia GED and other centers such as Center for Global Education and Discovery and Center for Liberal Education and Learning at Sophia, to help us expand our business activities throughout Southeast Asia over the coming years. At the same time, our most important role in the eyes of Sophia University is to attract more students from Southeast Asia. So, I hope that the young professionals who make up a large slice of Nikkei Asia’s readers will remember the Sophia name if they have children who may be thinking of studying in Japan.