Where to go after high school?

Where to go after high school? In commemoration of Friday's National Education Day, The Jakarta Post looks into the issue on this page, and pages 5, 8 and 9. The articles are prepared by the Post's team of reporters, Johannes Simbolon, K. Basrie, A. Junaidi, Christiani A. Tumelap, Deborah P. Hutauruk, Lukman Natanegara, and IGN Oka Budhi Yogaswara.

JAKARTA (JP): A group of high school girls had gathered at a new fashion school's stand during the ongoing education fair at the Jakarta Convention Center.

The school, which is based in Jakarta and affiliated to a famous fashion school in Europe, offers a three-year course costing between US$7,200 and $8,400 a year.

The girls looked impressed with the way the school's representative promoted the school.

"You'd better enroll at this school, 'cause it's teeming with enjoyment. You don't need to learn Pancasila (the state ideology), PMP (Pancasila ethics) or mathematics," was how the person wooed the girls.

"A fashion designer now gets between Rp 1 million ($423) and Rp 3 million a month. After you finish your study in three years, you might receive an even higher salary," he said.

The annual fair, which is open until tomorrow, offers a multitude of choices to the final-grade students who leave school early next month.

All the universities and schools participating in the fair offer attractive packages, or, if they don't have attractive packages, they employ clever strategies to win the students' hearts.

The Army, which could not promise high salaries, displayed weapons and even gave students the opportunity to practice shooting and rappelling at a mock training ground. After completing the latter, and signing his or her name and address on the guest book, they received in return a commemorative souvenir such as a T-shirt carrying army's logo, or a pen.

"The number of students who want to enroll in the army has decreased over the past two years. Through this fair, we want to win back their hearts. We want to implant a sense of nationalism in their hearts, so they don't only think about money," said Lt. Col. R.H. Permana on the army's stand.

Universities from Britain, the United States, Singapore, Australia and the Netherlands also take part in the fair. Some of them try to lure students with the so-called "twinning program". Under the program, students learn for two years in Indonesia before transferring automatically abroad.

The end of high school is indeed a moment of opportunities. For nonprofit-oriented organizations such as the army, it is a time to select its future leaders. For profit-driven schools, it is the time to make money.

Tight competition

In this era of tight competition, more and more parents think their children should go to university. They are afraid that otherwise their offspring will end up earning little money by doing menial jobs at labor-intensive factories or digging holes for phone cables at night in the company of mosquitoes.

But going to university is not easy. First of all, it requires a lot of money. If students are lucky enough, they may be accepted at one of the prestigious state universities which charge lower tuition fees than private universities.

State universities charge students an average Rp 1 million to enroll. This includes the entrance fee and tuition fee for one semester. Some private universities charge more than Rp 10 million.

An estimated 1.3 million high school students will end their studies this year, 100,000 more than last year. They will compete for a limited number of seats at the 51 state universities around the country. If they fail, they will have to choose from the 1,262 private universities. Alternatively, if they are rich enough, they may go abroad.

The demand for places at state universities is so high that almost all high school students prepare themselves by taking a special short course to analyze the previous state university entrance tests.

Those who fail the entrance test might feel a loser. However some private universities offer a quality of education as good as, if not better than, state universities.

Chairman of the Indonesian Private Universities Consultative Body Bun Yamin Ramto recently said that of the 5,515 schools at the country's 1,262 private universities, only 996, or 18 percent, had been awarded the highest "equal" accreditation from the government. Twenty-two percent, or 1,206 schools, had the lower "acknowledged" accreditation, and the 3,313 other schools (60 percent) were considered good enough only for the lowest "registered" accreditation.

Schools with "equal" accreditation have the right to run their own final exams. Students at colleges with "acknowledged" status still have to take the state-organized final tests in certain subjects. The "registered" colleges have to cooperate with the government to organize the final tests in all subjects.

The schools with equal accreditation are concentrated in Java; there are none in less-developed areas like Kalimantan, Maluku and Irian.

"Many students go to private universities of unknown quality without a guarantee of being absorbed into the labor market after finishing their studies. It's waste of time, money and energy," said education expert Mochtar Buchori.

Mochtar said there was no complete and systematic information database on the state of the country's private universities.

A private universities coordinator, Usman Pelly, recently said that only 0.3 percent of the annual 250,000 university graduates could be absorbed into the labor market and it would take about 25 years to increase the proportion to 10 percent.

And that is not the only worrying statistic. Yamin said Indonesia had the lowest ratio of university students and graduates in Southeast Asia. Only 11 percent or 2.4 million of the 21-million Indonesians aged 19 to 24 years had studied at university, compared with 30 percent in the Philippines, 28 percent in Thailand, 13 percent in Malaysia, 53 percent in Japan, 38 percent in South Korea, and 68 percent in the United States.

He said the government planned to increase the ratio to 25 percent by the end of the Second Twenty-Five Year Long Term Development Plan in 2019.

According to government data, only 45.7 percent or 551,000 of the 1.2 million high school graduates last year were admitted to the country's universities. The rest had to find a job or improve their academic ability through short courses.

"Not all students could or should go to university. Some of them go straight into work or take vocational courses. Being able to continue studying at the university level depends on various factors. One of them is definitely financial," said Minister of Education and Culture Wardiman Djojonegoro. (team)