Education system needs changes

By Nirwan Idrus

This is the second of two articles on the Indonesian education system.

JAKARTA (JP): Low salaries at state universities and polytechnics force lecturers to moonlight, some even to the extent that their permanent jobs become secondary and their lecturing is delegated to their assistants.

Some of the assistants are merely eighth or ninth-semester students on the same course.

Because lecturers, as civil servants, cannot be fired -- even for nonperformance (see Iwan Pranoto, The Jakarta Post Sept. 7, 1998) -- the moonlighting continues unabated and at a great cost to their customers, the paying students, and as a consequence to the nation as a whole.

Elsewhere, lecturers are appointed in the first instance on the basis of their qualifications and experience. Their continuing employment is based on their performance, evaluated annually through a performance appraisal. A nonperforming lecturer is entitled to three warnings and only after these, if there is no improvement in performance after appropriate help and support, his/her employment can be terminated.

Some would pose the question of money. True, university rectors and polytechnic directors as well as lecturers need to be remunerated at the appropriate levels. Can Indonesia afford this? It is a wrong question. The right question is: can Indonesia afford "not" to do this?

It is actually a matter of priority. To date, there have been loans, amounting to more than US$800 million, for Indonesia's education system. To implement the changes at the 80 or so state tertiary education institutions suggested in my article on Tuesday -- better salaries and not making employees at state institutions civil servants -- would need just a small fraction of this amount, but the return on the investment would be many times this figure.

If Indonesia is serious about globalization, then there is no question of whether it can or cannot afford it. It is an imperative of inestimable value for current and future generations of Indonesians.

On the management side, the success of the changes will be enhanced by the use of an appropriate management model. A rector or director newly appointed under the new scheme will naturally bring his/her own management style, but in order to ensure consistent substance, the criteria for his/her selection must be in accordance with the guidelines of a management model.

For example, in many tertiary institutions in Europe, the European Foundation for Quality (EFQ) model is used. In brief, this requires strong leadership qualities, good people management, good policy and strategy and good resources as inputs into the process. The monitored output includes not only customer (students) satisfaction but also staff satisfaction, impacts on society and business results.

In many countries, ministries of education have monitoring and supporting roles to help "rehabilitate" tertiary institutions which are unable to live within their means and as a result continue to produce unacceptable business results.

Business results include the size of the return on investment (ROI), the size of surplus at the end of the financial year, the increase in the number of students during the year, the effectiveness of the learning as evaluated by the students as customers, the good perception of the institutions in the eyes of the students, their parents, the industry, indirect customers and stakeholders.

That is why the system has to change first. The model proposed above will force the management of the institutions to begin to look differently at its roles.

Without any doubt, there will be people who will cry: "Foul!, You're taking away our academic freedom!"

To them, questions can be raised such as: "You had it and what did you do with it? Did you come up with innovative ways of teaching and learning? Did you come up with earth-shattering research results? Did you publish in respectable international journals? Did you run useful, purposeful technical discussions, seminars and conferences where you were able to push your academic freedom to the limit? Did you do anything else to put your department, faculty and university at the forefront of knowledge barriers?"

There is no prize for guessing what the answer might be. To be blunt, the new system can do away with those types of people anyway. One can be certain that advertisements for jobs at universities and polytechnics in Indonesia will drag out surprises from the woodwork, provided as has already been alluded to above, a new system is brought in.

On the working period, the working hours of staff at state universities and polytechnics in Indonesia -- from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. -- are anachronistic. Even if the six or so hours per day are fully effective, this equates to about 35 hours a week. On average, an academic at an overseas university will spend 65 to 70 hours a week on the job, either carrying out research, writing papers, preparing better lecturing materials and methods, or in scheduled contact with students.

It is not known how many of the 35 hours per week are actually effective. Clearly, even if they are all as effective as those of foreign academics, we have already lost because we work half the total hours they do.

As somebody once said: "Success is 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration." The time factor is therefore necessary although not sufficient. Space does not allow a full argument on changing the working hours of academic staff at Indonesian universities and polytechnics. It suffices to say the more quality time one gives to a problem or issue, the better is the solution.

To the skeptics who say that the above will not work in Indonesia, it can be said that this has already worked in, at least, three higher education institutions in Indonesia, while one large state university is piloting a modified scheme in one of its faculties with better than expected results.

To come back to the question "Is the education system ready to help Indonesians globalize?, the truthful answer is negative, although, as argued on Tuesday, there are only four obstacles -- the appointments system, making academics civil servants, the current management model, and the working hours -- to an affirmative answer.

There are those who will argue that nothing can be done to this foursome of impediments to globalization in Indonesia. This is a normal "copout" -- an excuse for doing nothing. We all know that when we do nothing, we achieve nothing. Nobody is not afraid of stepping out of their comfortable cocoon, but the price is extremely small to pay for the rewards that lie ahead. Can Indonesia afford not to break out of that formidable-looking front-gate?

The writer is a consultant on higher education and quality management living in Jakarta. This article is a personal opinion.