Indonesian diaspora invited to promote education

Jakarta -wapresri.go.id In a meeting of professors of the Indonesian diaspora titled “World Class Visiting Professor”, Vice President Jusuf Kalla invited teachers of various universities in the world from Indonesia to contribute to advancing the national education, especially higher education.

“Lesson learned from overseas combined with experience in the country will make us have  rich references to improve the quality of our universities,” said the Vice President at a forum organized by the Directorate General of Science and Technology Resources of Higher Education, Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education at the ministry’s auditorium in Jakarta, on Monday morning (Dec. 19).

Efforts to improve the quality of higher education, said the Vice President, had actually been done long ago, one of them is through the development of centers of excellence in various universities.

However, the Vice President added that these efforts have not been able to elevate Indonesian universities’ ranking among world-class universities.

“We need a benchmarking with universities abroad because we face a lot of problems,” said the Vice President.

The problems, according to the Vice President, are primarily associated with lower quality control and educational culture.

At the end of his speech, the Vice President appreciated the Indonesian diaspora who have attended and participated in the program.

“This is the way of devotion, not concerned merely with high salary. Most importantly, this is a perpetual charity,” he said.

Earlier, in his report, the Chairman of the Organizing Committee who is also Director General of Science and Technology Resources of Higher Education of the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education Mr. Ali Ghufron Mukti said the Visiting World Class University Professor program is held from December 17 to 24, 2016.

This program, said Mr. Mukti, includes visits to several universities and Non-Government Organizations (LPNK), and a panel discussion about the direction of development of human resources in science and technology in universities and the role of the diaspora.

Meanwhile, Minister of Research, Technology and Higher Education Muhammad Nasir said on the same occasion, to early December 2016, the number of lecturers’ publications indexed in Scopus has reached 9,012 publications, considerably increasing from around 5,000 publications in 2014.

In 2017, he continued, his ministry will require all professors, which is around 5,800 people throughout Indonesia, to write for publications.

“We hope the diaspora contributed to improving education in Indonesia, not only in terms of publications, but also in the manufacture of prototypes, innovation and commercialization of research products,” said Nasir.

Nasir also added that research at the present time should be market-driven.

Accompanying the Vice President at the event were Head of the Secretariat of the Vice-President Mohamad Oemar, Deputy of People’s Empowerment and Equity Development Bambang Widianto and Special Staff to Vice President Syahrul Udjud. (KIP, Setwapres)

 http://www.wapresri.go.id/diaspora-indonesia-harus-majukan-pendidikan/