Government to restrict management schools

JAKARTA (JP): The government plans to limit the growth of business management courses to protect people from poor education.

Suyono Yahya of the Office of the Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare said yesterday that management courses offering masters degrees had to comply with the Ministry of Education's regulations on licensing, human resources and teaching facilities.

He said low-quality doctoral programs in the United States which cost between US$5,000 and $25,000 gave people "a degree without substance". The students only had to attend three-month academic programs and submit meager theses.

Kompas daily said that 10,000 of Indonesia's 19,000 masters degree students were enrolled in management courses, called Magister Managemen (MM). And 30 of the 50 licensed schools offering the program were private.

The MM, open to anyone with an undergraduate degree, is a government-recognized program which costs Rp 1.5 million (US$620) -- the same as the tuition for many kindergartens in Jakarta.

But the program has been widely criticized as a way for civil servants and senior military officers to further their careers regardless of the quality of education.

Many schools are reported to offer MM programs despite their licenses having been revoked by the Ministry of Education because of failure to meet educational standards.

The standards include a ratio of one instructor to between 20 and 25 students, and that schools must have four doctoral instructors and a rented building for classes which is not a shop-house.

Licenses have been canceled because the schools operate with a ratio of one instructor to more than 40 students, the doctoral instructors are either retired or hired on a part-time basis or classes are held in inadequate buildings.

Suyono said in a limited ministerial meeting yesterday that the Ministry of Education and Culture's Link and Match program had placed 200,000 vocational students with 35,000 enterprises this year.

The meeting, led by Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Azwar Anas, also discussed the welfare of elderly citizens.

Indonesians' average life expectancy is now 62.7 years. Azwar said that, by the end of the Sixth Five-year Development Plan in 2004, life expectancy would rise to 65.

He said 11.3 million people were aged 60 or more, and this was expected to increase to 15.1 million by 2000.

National Elderly Day will fall on May 29 this year. The country held its first elderly day last year. (01)