Abstract
Power electronics is an interdisciplinary area that is interstitial to all of the major disciplines of electrical engineering including power, electronics and control. Today, the covering field of power electronics has more widely spread out with the help of ever evolving microelectronics and computer science. Whereas, in Japan the tendency is becoming remarkable nowadays that science, especially "mathematics" and "hardware work", are falling into disfavor with the young people. For these reasons, it has become a very important problem to find out "what are the truest essentials of power electronics\ulcorner" and "How to give students incentives to learn power electronics\ulcorner " from an educational point of view In under-graduate and graduate courses in universities. On the other hand, the power electronics engineers in companies are always required to comply with the ever changing trend of global and open market. However, it takes long time to cultivate their skills. Against the background, "The Cooperative Research Committee on Education of Power Electronics" was established in the IEEJ Industry Applications Society during 2000-2001. The present status of the power electronics education in Japan is surveyed in this paper, and some problems with remedy are pointed out based on the discussions performed in the committee.sed on the discussions performed in the committee.