Quality of secretarial courses execrable

Quality of secretarial courses execrable

JAKARTA (JP): Secretarial courses are mushrooming around the
city, but the quality of their graduates is often execrable, the
head of the Indonesian Association of Secretaries (ISI) says.

Many graduates claim to have graduated from good courses and
institutes, "but some cannot even type addresses onto envelopes,"
Dewi Margono complained yesterday.

Dewi, a secretary at a property company, PT Pancanusa, said
that in her experience, graduates of secretarial courses applying
to be receptionists can't even handle telephone calls properly.

"I don't understand why this should be so," she said during a
break at a one-day seminar on secretarial communication skills.

"There are many new secretarial courses but we're worried
about their quality."

The Association, she said, is planning to survey the quality
of a number of secretarial institutes as a member of the board in
charge of examining the curricula of vocational schools. The
board is under the Ministry of Education and Culture.

However Dewi also said that the attitude of the graduates
themselves is probably the problem.

She said new graduates lack polish in their daily relationship
with clients.

Dewi, who started her career in the late 1970s, also said
secretaries used to express a stronger will to learn.

"In my day there were not as many secretarial courses as there
are now, but young secretaries were more willing to learn and
adjust," she said with a sigh.

Employers and clients of several companies, Dewi said, often
complain of secretaries' lack of social skills.

On a material basis the appreciation of secretaries has grown,
she said, with an average of Rp 700,000 (US$320) a month for
newcomers in large companies .

The seminar was organized by the Jakarta-based Metropolitan
Secretary Club in cooperation with Sisindosat, a subsidiary of PT
Indosat. The event was held in conjunction with World Secretary
Day which fell on April 24 this year. (anr)