The School of Social Sciences was established in 1966, uniting the evening divisions of three Waseda schools - the School of Political Science and Economics, the School of Law, and the School of Commerce. Our goal is to offer students an education that is comprehensive, integrated, and interdisciplinary; in other words, an education that is not narrowly confined to conventional fields of specialization.
Society today is changing at an unprecedented speed, and is, in addition, becoming more and more complex. Such changes in society inevitably call for a revaluation and a restructuring of the social sciences. Although we recognize the importance of past research in the various traditional disciplines which make up the social sciences, we also believe that a new approach is required, one that strives to be comprehensive as well as integrated and interdisciplinary.
Through both teaching and research, the School of Social Sciences strives to analyze today's society and to seek solutions to the various problems that it faces. To this end, we have developed a number of unique courses that incorporate the new approach. One good example is “Synthetic Studies in the Social Sciences.” This year-long course, which is usually taught by a team of three or four professors, focuses on a single theme and incorporates the methods and viewpoints of various academic fields, such as political science, economics, law, and commerce. Themes are chosen from contemporary social issues and are usually changed or revised every four years.
To meet the diverse requirements of society, the School of Social Sciences has set up several special admission policies. One, for example, allows men and women to pursue a university education whilst working fulltime. Another makes it possible for applicants to recommend themselves; in this way, the total sum of a student’s activities - social, musical, athletic, as well as academic - can be taken into consideration during the admission process. This system of self-recommendation is open to graduates of all types of high schools; in addition, it is “national” in scope, in that it chooses a proportional number of students from all of Japan’s prefectures.