According to the National Institution for Academic Degrees and University Evaluation, more than 1,200 kinds of undergraduate degrees were offered by Japanese universities in 2009; about 60 percent of them are unique.

Administrators of the new departments say they are establishing programs that prepare students for new challenges facing a society in flux.

At the Faculty of Social Innovation at Seijo University in Tokyo, students study corporate innovation and the roles of social groups and individuals, said Mitsunobu Shinohara, dean of the faculty. Students are exposed to a wide range of disciplines including business, public policy and social psychology, with innovation as an important common thread, he said.

“It’s critical to learn how to approach the issue and how to resolve it,” and not just to study facts, Mr. Shinohara said. He said that a more interdisciplinary approach gained popularity in the early 2000s, when his faculty was established.

New programs typically emphasize the thinking process and not the mere acquisition of knowledge.

“Japanese students take notes and memorize, so they can do well on the tests. But here, what you learn is not as important as how you learn,” said Harumasa Sato, dean of the Hirao School of Management at Konan University.

Mr. Sato said the main purpose of education was to train students to be thinkers, capable of exploring and finding answers on their own. “Students don’t exactly take courses, but rather the goal in this program is to finish five major projects,” which include oral and thesis presentations, Mr. Sato said. His school is about to graduate its first batch of students in March, and their job placement rate “has been pretty good,” he said.

To the extent that his and other new schools are experimenting with new ways to train students, the movement represents efforts to do things that traditional schools have fallen short on, he said.