Is the Pursuit of Novelty in Universities Still Necessary?
The word ‘novelty’ has become a familiar curse for Indonesian students. No matter how excellent a student’s work, if its novelty cannot be defended, it is considered worthless. This creates an unpleasant situation and a heavy psychological burden. Theses and dissertations that lack novelty are potentially rejected, rendering long periods of work meaningless and delaying graduation until a point of novelty is found.
To this day, the world of higher education still idolises novelty. The more prestigious a campus, the higher the novelty value it demonstrates. Conversely, a low number of novel findings makes a campus seem second-rate. As a result, the entire academic community is pushed to seek novelty everywhere. The heaviest burden falls on students, for whom the search for novelty is weighted more heavily and becomes the key to their final academic assignments, often leading to study delays.
The value of novelty was initially used to popularise the volume of research; the more fields and themes explored, the greater the chance for a university to rank among the most influential. Novelty must indeed be new. If the era was about books, the novelty was digital. If farming technology was conventional, the novelty was modern agriculture on narrow, limited land. If medicine was conventional, the novelty was digital medicine. The goal is noble: to show that science is at the forefront of human civilisation’s progress and that universities are thinking about things humans have not yet considered.
In 1986, when the author was studying electrical science, novelty in the field emerged with the discovery of the linear motor on a campus scale. The basic idea came from a conventional round, rotating electric motor, whose body was then cut and laid flat, causing the rotor to move linearly instead of rotating. That 1986 discovery by an Indonesian student has now become the mass electric trains seen everywhere. Novelty has continued to develop; beyond the linear motor, technology has now reached magnetic levitation trains in Japan and China.
Current developments focus on battery excellence for electric cars and charging speeds comparable to filling up at a conventional petrol station. The novelty of electric cars, moving towards hydrogen vehicles, is perhaps the current optimum point of novelty in energy and transportation. However, the question arises: should Indonesian universities be forced to compete in an ecosystem they do not possess? If the highest novelty is in magnetic fields and hydrogen, should our campuses open new arenas in superconductors or nuclear cores? This should be a collective contemplation on where to direct the nation’s human resources produced by higher education. It is disheartening that academics are terrorised by the diction of novelty by campus elites, while the reality of novelty in Indonesia is struggling.
In Chinese and Japanese universities, novelty is no longer mandatory because knowledge is highly flexible. Research on the same theme is allowed, with the substance being deepening. If a car battery previously used nickel, manganese, or cobalt minerals, the novelty could be changing the material to lithium, iron, or phosphate. The university compromises and still considers the research high quality. This approach to novelty needs to be compromised in Indonesian universities. The obligation for novelty has existed for a long time, yet the impact on society is that derivative products still do not originate from Indonesia. In media advancements, for instance, the nation remains a user, not a creator; social media platforms are not Indonesian discoveries.
It seems the spirit of always pursuing novelty must change because the Indonesian campus ecosystem is not yet capable of reaching that point. Universities must introspect on where they stand and how they can contribute to Indonesia’s progress. There is no need to be in the first rank of novelty if the capability is not there. It is not necessary to create drones or precision missiles, but researching drone or missile components is more contributive. The ranking for electric car novelty does not belong to Indonesia, but developing materials and components for electric cars is more feasible for Indonesian universities.
Many trivial research subjects are ignored by Indonesian campus resources because they are deemed to lack novelty value. These fields include agricultural innovation, dirty rivers, rampant waste, traffic congestion, alternative food sources, or chaotic regional planning. Campuses dream of rocket science to soar into space, but ironically, the road to campus is congested and exhausting every morning. This is seen as normal due to volume, timing, and other reasons. Universities should instead study all aspects and provide solutions; this would be more meaningful than constantly chasing novelty. Another point to consider is that novelty unsupported by an ecosystem ends up stored in campus laboratories. The embryo of cheap mass transportation, like the linear motor, was discovered in the 1980s, but it was other countries that developed it into magnetic electric trains. It is better for our universities to deepen specific fields rather than rush to find novelty in many areas without achieving true expertise.