Institution vows to meet requirement

JAKARTA (JP): An educational institution said yesterday it would continue with its management training while trying to increase its faculty members as requested by the Ministry of Education and Culture.

The ministry's office for higher education last week announced it would not accept applications to register new students of the Institute Pengembangan Wiraswasta Indonesia (Indonesian Institute for the Development of Entrepreneurship, IPWI). IPWI was also not to accept any more students.

"The institution's activities will continue while we seek more lecturers," Kartomo, the institute's executive chairman, said Friday.

Students of private higher learning institutes must be registered with the ministry's office to be eligible to sit for state university tests.

The ministry said it would not register more IPWI students because the institution had failed to comply with the requirement of one lecturer to every 20 students.

The institution was found to have only one lecturer to every 100 students. The ministry then turned down IPWI's registration applications for 1,000 new students.

Kartomo said the institution had met with a ministry official, and that IPWI had been given one year to employ more lecturers.

Kartomo said IPWI had 4,500 students which included unregistered students.

Established in 1990, 1,600 people had graduated from the institution, most of whom were government officials.

The minister's director of higher learning, Joetata Hadihardaja, also rejected the registration of IPWI students in its provincial programs.

The chairman of the institute's foundation, Soemitro, said their management programs also lacked requisites set by the ministry.

Higher education programs in provinces must have at least four permanent lecturers with doctorate degrees and two with master's degrees.

Soemitro said it was difficult to find provincial lecturers with doctorate degrees who had time to teach. (03)