One of Japan’s national universities, NTUT specialises in the education of hearing- and visually-impaired students.
First planned in the 1970s, it opened as Tsukubu College of Technology in 1987. The first hearing-impaired students were admitted in 1990 followed by the visually-impaired in 1991, the first classes graduating three years later. It received its charter as Japan’s only dedicated special needs university in 2005, with the Graduate School opening in 2010.
It is one of four universities in Tsukubu, known as Japan’s "City of Science". It was host to the 1985 World’s Fair and recipient of a high proportion of national public research and development expenditure. Tsukubu’s twin cities include academic centres like Grenoble, Cambridge, Massachusetts and Irvine, California.
NTUT aims to develop "socially independent professionals", enabling them to "study to the fullest and improve their abilities in a barrier-free environment" and helping pave the way to "the realisation of a barrier-free and universal society".
Around 90 students are admitted each year, divided between an intake of 50 hearing-impaired recruits studying industrial technology at the Amakubo Campus and 40 visually-impaired taking health science, half of them specialising in acupuncture and moxibustion, at Kasuga. The Graduate School takes in around 12 students each year.
NTUT is one of 22 institutions belonging to PEPnet, a national network for institutions strongly involved with special needs students. It has 16 international partners, the first agreement with the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute for Technology, New York State dating to 1992. In 2018 five NTUT students demonstrated "A Taste of Japanese Deaf Culture" at Gallaudet University, Washington DC.
