Eight prestigious universities in seven countries have formed a union to promote academic exchanges between students and cooperation in research, the University of Tokyo said Monday.
The seven other schools are the University of California Berkley, Yale University, Peking University, the Australian National University, the National University of Singapore, the University of Copenhagen and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.
With the launch of the union, students will have merits such as being able to get double degrees by studying at two different schools. Oxford University and one other university plan to join the union this January, the University of Tokyo said.
Ian Chubb, vice chancellor of the Australian National University, who heads the union, called the association a group of universities aiming to educate internationally minded students to become future world leaders.