Future of Higher Education

Indonesian youths who are currently pursuing Master's and Doctoral degrees overseas and inside the country really foster a sense of optimism about the future of higher education and the improvement of the overall quality of our human resources.

They are, particularly, the recipients of scholarships from the Indonesian government through the Finance Ministry and the Education Fund Management Institution (LPDP) and there were about 5,000 of them at the beginning of 2016. Several of them who are pursuing Doctoral studies in the Netherlands and Germany are already in their third year, even though they are still only 27 or 28 years old. Most of those at the Master's degree level are 20 years old. If, after earning their Master's, they immediately proceed to the Doctoral level, they will get their PhDs before the age of about 30 years.

That means Indonesia will soon have thousands of young people with new Doctoral qualifications every year and in the future the average productive period will be much longer than at present. In Asia, the "grand harvest" of Indonesia's educated human resources will be surpassed only by China. Since 10 years ago, the Chinese government has been sending its youth to study overseas and 6,000 of them reach the Doctoral level every year.

For Indonesia, the sense of optimism is getting increasingly strong because young Indonesians who are financed by the state do not belong to a laissez-faire generation. They do not see education solely as a vehicle for individual vertical mobility. They are not an "uncaring generation" as described by pedagogue Mochtar Buchori.

As learned from discussions with a number of LPDP scholarship recipients in the Netherlands and Germany, their commitment toward Indonesian development is deeply felt. From the aura of competence, insight, ambition and career orientation they exude, they confirm that their collective potential is formidable and bodes well for the progress of the country in the future if they are properly managed institutionally.

Fresh air

In particular, the presence of young people with Doctoral qualifications will become a fresh breeze for the university world in Indonesia. Even though not all of them will be or have become lecturers, the significant additional numbers of people in the workforce with those qualifications will improve the competitive power of the universities as one of the job choices.

In line with the Law on Teachers and Lecturers, one of the requirements to become lecturers is to have at least a Master's degree. Those with Doctorates enjoy a privileged position because they are classified into a rare group. By 2013, the number of people with Doctoral degrees in Indonesia still accounted for only 11 percent of the total 154,968 fully employed lecturers at universities.

On the other hand, many lecturers with Doctoral qualifications have approached or passed the age of 50 years. Their productivity has also been receding. As a result, in many places we meet lecturers with Doctoral qualifications whose performances do not contribute too significantly to the improvement of the competitiveness of universities in Indonesia.

With the entrance of thousands of young people with Doctoral qualifications into the workforce in the next several years, the selection of university lecturers would become more stringent. Like in Germany, someone's biological age, the age of his or her Doctoral diploma and the average number of publications based on the comparison between the biological age and the age of the Doctoral diploma constitute interrelated factors that are used as basic considerations in selecting candidates to be lecturers. The objective is to get a candidate with the most potential, productivity and working life duration as possible.

The academic atmosphere in universities is expected to also become increasingly dynamic. There will be a time when Doctoral qualifications alone do not guarantee quality and expertise. Someone with a Doctoral qualification will be required to do serious post-doctoral research and consistently publish in order to survive scientifically. All of this will undoubtedly become commonplace in Indonesian universities over the next several years.

Youth leadership

However, all of the optimization opportunities for the collective potential of young people with Doctoral qualifications will be lost if employment, career systems and reward mechanisms in Indonesia are less competitive. Our youth with Doctoral qualifications will look for better opportunities in other countries. The government investment will be useless. These challenges will be greater because the ASEAN and Asia-Pacific free trade enables the migration of educated people more easily.

The university world as one of the job choices may miss an opportunity from the presence of young people with Doctoral qualifications if there is no quick internal improvement. So far there are complaints about the lack of laboratory facilities, libraries and research funding. Even though these things are crucial, I think the root of the problem is in the stagnation of the system and work climate caused by the character of university leadership in general, which is not adaptive and is slow to respond to reforming ideas.

On average, the leadership of universities in Indonesia is currently in the hands of old people. The academic atmosphere is also determined by the political actions of old people, who make power-plays in the narrow bureaucracy of the campus. Cases in several places show that the spirit and willingness of young lecturers to go forward by developing serious research and academic activities is frequently hindered or even turned off by the bureaucratic mentality of the superiors and seniors themselves, instead of giving them room, direction and guidance.

"Being old" here is not only in terms of biological age, but also in leadership perspective and the orientation of the development of science. The leadership of the old group could contain relatively young people, but their academic work, especially their latest research, was carried out five to 10 years ago, or even more. Among them there are lecturers who do not have any international scientific experience in their fields. It is not known how universities with such a leadership profile can fulfill the mission they enthusiastically formulate for themselves: "To become research universities that are recognized in the world."

The presence of young people with Doctoral qualifications who have a new spirit and perspective has the potential to revolutionize the stagnation of the academic atmosphere and bring about a radical performance renewal. However, it will not take place if the university leadership paradigm is not amended to be ready to accept the presence, progress and work dynamics of the young people.

Therefore, instead of discussing the importation of rectors, which sparks xenophobic and chauvinistic reactions, it is better for Research, Technology and Higher Education Minister Mohamad Nasir (and also President Joko Widodo) to prepare a blueprint for a new paradigm of leadership in universities to be imbued by the spirit and characteristics of the young people. Among them should be those who are progressively agile, open to change and accommodative to the needs and development of the potential of the campus inhabitants. Besides that, with 35 percent of the voting rights for the election of rectors of state universities throughout Indonesia in his hands, the minister of research, technology and higher education himself has to develop within himself the new paradigm of leadership for universities that is oriented toward the younger people.

The paradigm of university leadership needs overhauling so that universities in Indonesia become an interesting and competitive job choice for thousands of young people with new Doctoral degrees who will return to the country and will be ready to devote themselves. If the young people with Doctoral degrees are managed with a leadership that is based on the spirit and the soul of the times so that they have room to develop optimally, then the future of universities in Indonesia will certainly be bright. At that time, the issue of the low ranking of universities and the lack of scientific publications, which unwittingly become the basis of all strategic policies on the management of universities at present, will be resolved by itself through their overwhelming performance.

by Agus Suwignyo

source Kompas, Tuesday, June 21, 2016