Foreign degrees no panacea for unemployment woes

Foreign degrees no panacea for unemployment woes

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Urgently needed. Account Executive. Graduated from a reputable
local or overseas university (master's degree advantageous), with
good business sense and accustomed to working in a fast-paced
environment.

Twenty three-year-old Yuri frequently remembers reading the
advertisement for the job she longed for, run by a local
advertising agency in Kompas daily several months ago.

"Most of the openings I was interested in demanded high
qualifications. Even though I have a degree, it was still not
enough," said Yuri, who graduated with a bachelor's degree in
communications from the University of Indonesia in Jakarta a year
ago.

"It took a while until my friends and I got jobs. Some have
even had to wait six months or a year, or more," she said.

Yuri's experience is one shared by many college graduates with
bachelor's degrees. High unemployment and an increasing number of
graduates entering the market each year has pushed up the demand
for higher qualifications and made it difficult for graduates to
find jobs.

Darsana Setiawan, head of higher education at the Jakarta
Middle to Higher Education Agency, said that the issue was not a
lack of intellectual ability on the part of the student, but the
lack of emphasis on creative thinking and the poor quality of
education available at local universities.

"Universities are not adept at promoting the competence of
their students. The level of competence achieved by their
graduates is not always readily apparent," Darsana said.

The agency lists at least 3,000 people with undergraduate
degrees in Indonesia as unemployed.

According to Darsana, there are many universities in Jakarta
offering international programs in order to promote their
accreditation level and to prove their accountability to the
public.

The University of Indonesia (UI) has opened an international
class program, known as the "double degree" program in medicine,
psychology, computer science, engineering, and economics, which
enables students to graduate with a degree from a university
abroad and one from UI.

In the program, the students spend the first four semesters at
UI and go on to continue their remaining four semesters at a
university abroad.

UI director of education Muhammad Anis said the program had
existed since 2000, and aimed to accommodate students who were
searching for a cost-effective international study environment.

However, Anis said he believed students who graduated with a
double degree had about the same academic competency as students
graduating with a single degree from a local university.

"Students who join the double degree international program are
likely to be better at speaking English and have wider
international knowledge. That's all.

"That doesn't mean that they will find it any easier to get a
job than local graduates," he said. "Networking and the
establishment of contacts during their undergraduate years seem
to be more important."

However, according to Darsana, the agency perceives double
degree graduates as being more responsible and dependable than
graduates of local institutions with international programs.

"However, the value of the double degree in the eyes of
employers depends a lot on which universities the graduates
attended," he said.