Campuses urged to boost quality of graduates

Campuses urged to boost quality of graduates

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Indonesian institutions of higher education must produce
graduates who can compete in a fast-changing global marketplace,
soon to include the Asia Pacific Free Trade Area (AFTA) which
takes effect next year, according to Minister for National
Education Malik Fadjar.

Malik said on Sunday that campuses, as prominent sources of a
high-quality pool of human resources, play a central role in a
country's development.

"If campuses are able to nurture better graduates, we are
optimistic that Indonesia can compete with other countries under
the scheme of AFTA," he said, as quoted by Antara.

Malik was speaking while inducting Sahabuddin Mustafa as
rector of Tadulako University in Palu, the capital of Southeast
Sulawesi.

According to Malik, his ministry had suggested that campuses
should focus on upgrading students' intellectual abilities, their
command of English, along with their creative thinking.

"This would also be our priority in a bid to narrow the
quality gap in human resources between Indonesia and other
countries," he said.

Malik's statement should serve as a wake-up call for many
political parties concerned with the quality of Indonesia's
workforce and educational systems.

In the year 2000, the United Nations Development Program
(UNDP) recorded Indonesia as having a poor quality of human
resources, ranking the country 107th out of 174.

Indonesia is ranked below even several other Southeast Asian
countries in terms of human resources. Singapore tops the list in
the region at number 24, ahead of Malaysia (64), Thailand (76),
the Philippines (77), and Vietnam (108).

The latest survey, conducted by the Singapore-based Political
and Economics Risk Consultancy (PERC), at the end of 2001 ranked
Indonesia's education quality at the bottom of 12 countries
surveyed.

Narsito, a lecturer at the Yogyakarta-based Gadjah Mada
University, revealed another gloomy picture for the country's
academicians, saying that the world at large has little awareness
of the work of Indonesian researchers.

"Many research projects have been carried out by Indonesians
-- but none of them are internationally recognized," said
Narsito.

He attributed this to the fact that, overall, the scientific
environment here has not been very supportive of Indonesians
seeking to produce world-class research.