Education reform could reduce unemployment among graduates
Education reform could reduce unemployment among graduates
Aziz, Kuala Kencana, Papua
The rate of university-educated unemployment in Indonesia is
at an alarming level and James Alderson, in his article on May
22, analyzed the reasons why many graduates in Indonesia remain
unemployed, focusing particularly on their failure to meet
corporate standards of recruitment.
His analysis basically pointed to the mismatch inadequate
quality of training in universities as the main contributors to
the unemployment.
What may have been overlooked in Alderson's analysis is that
for Indonesians being unemployed is not an option, socially and
economically. This is different from several developed countries,
primarily those with good welfare systems.
The important implication of this situation is that typically,
for most parents in Indonesia, the options are: a) send their
children right out after high school and help them find a job,
although the pay will not be good, or b) send their children to
university with additional and, more often than not, considerable
expenses in the hope of a better job and pay.
It comes as no surprise that demand for higher education
continues to increase with the growth of the population. Every
year some 400,000 students graduate from high school and perhaps
only 75,000 seats are available in public (state) universities.
Public universities are generally considered good quality and
affordable.
Some private universities fill the gap by offering comparable
educations, but with higher tuition. Assuming these good private
universities offer approximately the same number of seats as
public universities, the combined available seats would absorb
only 150,000 students, leaving the rest to either stop their
educations or attend lower quality universities.
Naturally, every parent wants their children to continue their
education, no matter what. So parents keep sending their children
to university. Yet they forget, or are unaware, that university
graduates have different expectations than high school graduates.
High school graduates know they have few qualifications, and so
they accept "blue-collar" jobs that many university graduates
would refuse.
In theory, however, if university graduates take jobs that
require few qualifications national productivity would increase
accordingly. For instance, what happens if an engineer takes a
job as a laborer in a garment factory? The engineer should be
able to make shoes two or three times better in terms of quality
and quantity than a poorly educated laborer.
Investors probably would love to pay higher wages as long as
the higher wages guaranteed higher productivity. Unfortunately
that is not likely to happen.
This is first because of a lack of willingness to fill the
blue-collar jobs, and second because even a willingness does not
come with guaranteed higher productivity.
As mentioned earlier, Indonesia does not have a social
security system that allows unemployment as an option. The way it
works is that the family, or extended family, will support the
unemployed as their lifelong responsibility. So they keep sending
their children to university even though their children
eventually may still be unemployed.
The solution for unemployment has got to be simultaneous both
from society in changing the perception of the importance of
higher education, and from government and universities in
changing from a visionary to a strategic approach for overcoming
the high unemployment rate among university graduates.
What Alderson proposed in giving students "hands-on"
experience to help them adapt to the corporate world after
graduation is not new.
Wardiman Djojonegoro, former minister of culture and
education, once introduced the concept of "link and match", which
undoubtedly was inspired by the education system in Germany.
Unfortunately, this program has not been heard of since
Wardiman Djojonegoro left his post. In any event, link and match
is not a simple task. It requires a grand design in national
manpower planning that must be closely coordinated with
developments in the national economy, and requires the full
support of the private sector.
The basic question of link and match is how many engineers,
accountants, scientists and other professionals to produce to
match the needs of the economy? How many universities are needed
and how to control the quality of these institutions? These
questions are at the center of the problem and without the
answers the development of higher education will remain lacking.
Back in 1972, Lee Kuan Yew, in a speech to university students
ion Singapore, addressed the matter of how many engineers to
produce. Lee told the students that the government had to set
priorities considering the significant cost of subsidizing
engineers, technicians and technical students, and how to match
the future workforce with economic development.
Lee observed that the U.S. and Britain had different
approaches from one another. In the U.S. system, the ratio of
engineers to technicians was 1:2, and engineers also did the job
of technicians, hence earning a higher income than British
engineers, who supervised an average of eight technicians.
After evaluating the leading sectors that Singapore needed to
focus on, and the cost benefit of each type of system, Lee
decided to adopt the British approach for the ratio of engineers
to technicians.
He said Singapore's government would review this policy over
the next five years and another review would take place within 10
years.
Indonesia, with its vast size and diversified economy, might
need a different approach but should follow the same basic
principle. The leading sectors in Papua are certainly different
from those in Java, hence it will require different tactics to
determine the types of education needed for each place.
Leading economists now say that the world is heading for
competitive advantage, as opposed to the "old" comparative
advantage. Indonesia is having trouble maintaining some of its
comparative advantages (like cheap labor), let alone achieving
competitive advantage.
Unless more comprehensive and strategic measures for education
reform are taken and consistently implemented, getting a degree
as a form of deferred unemployment will continue to be the norm
rather than the exception. We will be lucky if this does not
become an explosion that eventually turns into social unrest.
The author, a free-lance writer, can be reached at
aziz@fmi.com