Deputy Minister Fauzan urges collaboration for higher education transformation

Jakarta (ANTARA) - Deputy Minister for Higher Education, Science, and Technology (Wamendiktisaintek) Fauzan is encouraging multi-party collaboration to transform higher education in Indonesia. In a statement in Jakarta on Thursday, Deputy Minister Fauzan stressed that the transformation of higher education can only be achieved through a collaborative and structured change in working methods. “To shine, we must change. The nation has long conducted education in a mediocre manner, whereas there must be value that we can sell,” he said. Wamendiktisaintek Fauzan appreciated the efforts of various universities to form a consortium, one of which is the Bali Education Consortium. “The importance of this consortium is to generate value that can be utilised by the community through local governments. Therefore, the presence of higher education institutions, wherever they are, must be able to contribute to regional development,” said Deputy Minister Fauzan. He also emphasised that universities can no longer operate in isolation when addressing development challenges. “So far, universities have had extraordinary research commodities, but they have been working alone. If done together, it will provide a much wider radius of impact,” he stated. This collaboration is expected to be immediately implemented in the form of concrete programmes, such as cross-campus collaborative research, thematic Community Service Programmes (KKN) based on regional issues, strengthening innovation downstreaming, and inter-campus mentoring programmes. In agreement, the Rector of Universitas Pendidikan Ganesha (UPG), I Wayan Lasmawan, noted that fragmentation between campuses still exists, causing the contribution of higher education to solving regional problems, particularly in education, to be less than optimal. “I hope that through this consortium, boundless collaboration will be built. The hope is that this consortium will eventually add colour and beautify the landscape of education in Indonesia through limitless problem-solving. Let us start working concretely in a togetherness that continues to grow,” said I Wayan Lasmawan.