Visionary leaders needed to reform higher education

Ardimas Sasdi, Staff Writer, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta, ardimas@thejakartapost.com

Sixteen countries have demanded that Indonesia revoke a policy shutting the door to foreign professionals and managers, which goes against the liberalization of the labor market outlined in a World Trade Organization (WTO) arrangement, sparking strong protests from Indonesian officials and experts (The Jakarta Post, Jan. 15). These critics say the WTO deal is unfair to Indonesia as a developing country.

They argue that Indonesia is not yet ready to fully liberalize its labor sector, and that the request, if approved, would put many of the country's doctors, lawyers and managers out of work.

However, a Post contributor, Werner Kiby (Feb. 7), said Indonesia should instead open herself to more foreigners with higher education and working skills, to learn from them until Indonesians are equal to or even better than their teachers.

This argument shows a common view: Graduates of local universities are not on par with graduates of foreign institutions.

Indonesia should take the 16 countries' request to open its labor market as a wake-up call to reform higher education here, to prepare university graduates to enter the job market and compete with their peers from abroad in a fast growing world.

Reform in higher education must be accomplished in one package with political and economic reform, and not as an ad hoc or partial reform, as attempted by the government in the past.

Future graduates of higher education must be ready to compete in a knowledge-based society with core competence in information technology, excellent communication skills, fluency in major foreign languages and superb skills in their chosen fields.

University graduates should also be trained to think analytically, critically, systematically and to strive for excellence in their fields.

Indonesia should also expand the mission of higher education from its three traditional roles as a center for education, research and community service, giving the system larger scope by adding globalization. Salaries of lecturers and administrative staff should also be raised.

Our higher education system has been criticized for being outdated, focusing on rote memorization and burdensome curricula which kill the creativity of students and lecturers.

The critics' parameters include input from business circles as the employers of university graduates, who are said to lack literacy in IT, communication skills and English language skills.

Surveys by independent agencies support the views of the business community.

Asiaweek, in its June 30, 2000, edition, reported that three of Indonesia's best universities ranked near the bottom of 77 universities and multidisciplined schools from Japan, South Korea, India, China, Singapore and Indonesia. University of Indonesia, for instance, ranked 61, Gadjah Mada University 68 and Diponegoro University 73.

The writer's experience as a lecturer at a private university in Jakarta since 1997 and as an alumnus of a graduate school at the University of Indonesia supports the complaints and survey findings on problems besetting our higher education system.

The problems are the "three Ms", short for marginal.

The first M refers to facilities such as textbooks, libraries and laboratories; the second relates to students with low motivation, poor reading habits and little knowledge of English, and with little preparation for courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Further, many graduate students have to work to finance their studies -- at the expense of their studies.

The third M refers to lecturers, who are not qualified to teach or who are highly qualified but treat their teaching jobs as side jobs due to all their activities outside of campus.

It is common knowledge that high-caliber, bright lecturers also work as ministers, directors-general, staff experts and advisers at government agencies and private institutions in order to supplement their incomes and support their lifestyles.

The basic salary for a professor with a master's or a PhD from a top university abroad is only Rp 2 million (US$220) a month.

The situation of lecturers at private universities and colleges is not much better than that of their peers at state universities. Private universities pay about Rp 25,000 per session, which generally last one hour and 40 minutes. The amount is only enough to cover the cost of transportation and food.

Meager salaries force many lecturers to take side jobs like teaching at several universities, shuttling from one campus to another to meet their packed schedules.

This condition leads to disgruntled students and parents, who feel that they are not being fairly treated by lecturers who do not have time to check students' papers properly, let alone to detect violations, such as photocopying other students' work or copying the theses of older students.

Worse, many universities and colleges are so small that they cannot cover their operational costs from student fees. But that does not means that big universities do not have problems with the increasing commercialization of institutions of higher learning.

The Ministry of Education has set tough regulations, including the requirement of higher learning instutions to submit profiles of lecturers of state and private universities, to protect public interest. However, some universities still use loopholes in the ruling, such as "borrowing" the names of famous professors to raise their accreditation levels to lure prospective students.

This has been going on for years, but no concrete action has been taken by the government against these universities.

Such problems are interwoven with economic, political and social history. Both former presidents Sukarno and Soeharto share the blame for the current problems plaguing national education.

Soeharto could have allocated sufficient funds gained from the oil boom after an embargo in 1970s against sending young, talented students to study at the best universities in Europe and the U.S., as done by South Korea, China, Taiwan, Thailand and Malaysia in order to build a strong pool of human resources.

Those five Asian countries, which became Asia's emerging economies as a result of their investment in human resources, sent more than 10,000 students a year to study overseas with government funding, while Indonesia sent only hundreds of students a year with scholarships from foreign agencies such as the Ford Foundation and Fulbright.

The scant attention paid to education on the part of Sukarno and Soeharto is not unusual -- dictators and tyrants know full well that promoting education contradicts their aim to stay in power as long as possible.

Resolving higher education problems now rests on our current leaders and the people. Our problem in developing a strong pool of human resources lies more in a lack of political will and a vision of education and the country's future on the part of our leaders, rather than with the individuals here.