Better pay urged for lecturers at university
Better pay urged for lecturers at university
JAKARTA (JP): Low university salaries are impeding the abilities of lecturers, thus affecting the number of engineers trained well enough to meet the demands of the industrial sector, experts say.
The government must therefore take a serious interest in improving the welfare of lecturers if they ever plan to produce qualified and motivated students.
"Teachers must be exceptionally good. If you have lousy teachers, you get lousy products," said Professor Liew Ah Choy, the Vice Dean of Engineering at the National University of Singapore.
Speaking at the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) colloquium on engineering and technology education yesterday, Liew Ah Choy pointed out that low salaries could force lecturers to moonlight and to lose interest in their teaching responsibilities.
He also pointed out that quality graduates would shy away from low government salaries and would opt instead for the private sector.
"You shouldn't count on their 'love for the job'; they should be paid respectable salaries as well," he emphasized.
Citing Singapore as a role model, Liew Ah Choy pointed out that the Singapore government, aware of this, went as far as adjusting the wage of lecturers with the standards of the private sector.
Lecturers in his country, therefore, have no reason to seek employment on the side as they are paid well and fully understand that teaching is a full-time job.
The three-day colloquium is aimed at providing a forum for engineering educators and engineering industries to share experiences and insight on engineering education methods and to compare engineering education in various countries.
It is also intended to come up with appropriate programs to link and match engineering education to industrial requirements, a task Indonesian Minister of Education and Culture Wardiman Djojonegoro has pursued since the beginning of his term in 1993.
In his keynote address yesterday he also acknowledged the importance of raising university salaries. However, he pointed out that it would not be easy considering limited state funding.
Moonlight
It is common knowledge in Indonesia that many lecturers, especially those of civil servant status and at state universities, moonlight to make ends meet.
In doing so, not only do they neglect their academic responsibilities of teaching and counseling, they also leave the campuses for long periods of time to tend to their "projects" and other non-academic businesses.
A recent university graduate holding an S1 degree (equivalent to a Bachelor of Arts in the U.S.) who intends to work as a civil servant currently receives about Rp 130,000 (US$60) a month. A senior professor may earn around Rp 400,000 ($185).
Ary M. Pedju, President Director of Encona Engineering Inc. and a former lecturer, said that while he strongly encouraged university-industry partnerships on the basis of mutual benefit, he considered moonlighting as potentially harmful to both private industries and universities in terms of time lost in each sector.
"The experience gained outside may or may not be academic and thus may be irrelevant to what students need to be taught," he continued.
"Companies are actually reluctant to hire academics on such a basis...Links between industry and universities should be done at the institutional and not personal level," he said.
He believes that links should be between each industry and specific university departments, and not with the university or a particular faculty, since departments "know exactly how to identify industries related to their field".(pwn)