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)