Why does ICU place importance on general education courses, as well as specialized courses?

It is common at many universities to have courses, called foundation courses or liberal arts courses, in which students study a wide range of topics before they start studying the specialization they chose before enrolling, without being bound by that specialization, to nurture the academic foundations they will require to study in their specialized curriculum.

ICU has a similar group of courses, which we call general education courses, consisting of humanities, social sciences, and natural science courses. At ICU, however, students do not decide on a major until the end of their second year, so the significance of these courses differs greatly from that of other universities. The purpose of our general education courses is not to study the academic foundations premised on a specialization; instead, we see them as an important opportunity for students to encounter the essence of a variety of academic domains, discover for themselves which area they truly want to study, and acquire the tools necessary to approach their chosen field from various perspectives.

Avoiding an over-emphasis on knowledge acquisition, ICU's general education courses allow students to continue learning throughout their lives on campus so they can grow as a person, and to give fresh thought to the society we live in today from the perspectives of the respective domains of humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.

Hachiro Yuasa, the founding president of ICU, had this to say in a paper called "ICU and General Education."
'ICU's emphasis on general education is based on reflection and criticism of the state of universities in the pre-War period and of society's expectations of universities. Universities are, in essence, educational institutions, and places for character building. One of the great post-War discoveries is the view of universities that they have a mission to cultivate capable, moral citizens who have the ability to take responsibility.' President Yuasa went on to describe the ideal image of a university graduate. 'A university graduate should not only have acquired specialized knowledge and skills, but should also be a person of character and an individual human being of common sense and good conscience.' How to think and how to live. Our general education courses give our students the opportunity to think about these two questions.