Bachelor in Global Liberal Arts

Global Liberal Arts is a four-year bachelor's degree taught in English at Ritsumeikan University's Osaka campus in Japan, with intake in both April and September. Ritsumeikan University is a comprehensive private university in western Japan with over 100 years of history, chosen to lead the globalization of Japanese higher education under the government-funded Top Global University Project; the university now has around 36,000 students studying and researching across its four campuses in Kyoto, Shiga, and Osaka. Global Liberal Arts is one of the English-medium bachelor's programs the university has developed as part of that globalization effort, including dual and joint degree options with partner universities abroad. A global liberal arts curriculum typically spans the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, with students taking a broad range of courses before focusing on particular areas of interest, alongside training in critical thinking, research skills, and cross-cultural communication. Because the program is taught in English within a Japanese university, students often study alongside a mix of Japanese and international classmates, and dual or joint degree arrangements can allow some students to graduate with degrees from both Ritsumeikan and a partner institution overseas. Graduates of liberal arts programs commonly move into graduate study, international organizations, media, education, business, and public sector careers, drawing on the breadth of a cross-disciplinary undergraduate education. Ritsumeikan's Osaka campus, one of four campuses that also include Kyoto and Shiga, together with the university's Top Global University Project status, gives Global Liberal Arts students an English-medium undergraduate option within a long-established private university pursuing further internationalization.