Experts advise brain drain for Indonesia

JAKARTA (JP): Overseas university and school graduates should rush the foreign job markets rather return home to outdo their domestic competitors, educational observers agreed yesterday.

Thoby Mutis, Director of the Post-graduate Program at Trisakti University, said yesterday the race for jobs would be unfair if it pitted domestic against overseas graduates.

"Now the global market is rolling on, overseas graduates must take their chances of getting jobs abroad," Thoby said.

A member of the House of Representatives Commission IX which oversees education and culture, Wuryanto, sided with Thoby, saying foreign university alumni would be head-and-shoulders above their domestic counterparts.

"Due to limited employment at home, overseas graduates are called on to seek international level jobs," said Wuryanto of the ruling Golkar faction.

Vice President Try Sutrisno said 130,000 Indonesian university graduates remained unemployed this year, most of them from the social and cultural sciences. Try said the domestic formal job market only managed to employ between 50 and 60 percent of university graduates annually.

The two experts agreed that foreign university graduates were welcome to come home only to fill the shoes of expatriates.

"Overseas graduates may take part in domestic competition, but only to vie for vacancies at multinational companies operating in this country," Thoby was quoted by Antara.

Thoby said Indonesians going international at multinational companies would end the country's long-time reputation as a mere exporter of maids and other cheap workers.

He also suggested domestic universities initiate outward- looking efforts by admitting more foreign applicants, as other Southeast Asian countries have done.

"We can recruit experts from various field studies to run an international-level university," Thoby said.

He predicted that education would be a good prospective business for countries competing in a free market.

"All organizers of educational institutions should be alert to this possibility," Thoby said. (amd)