Editorial: The missing link

The euphoria of nearly 1.5 million senior high school students who passed the recent national exam is over. Now they face a more daunting challenge: winning university seats or perhaps finding a job.

As happened in 2010 and in previous years, universities, particularly state universities, will only be able to admit a limited number of new students. Competition has grown fiercer over the years as those who failed the university admission test try their luck again and again at the exam.

State universities across the country allocated more than 46,700 seats — one-fifth of the total — for the highest-ranked new high school graduates.. With 43,400 seats on offer to students whose parents are financially able to fully cover their children’s studies, state universities will only have 18,400 seats up for grabs in the national university admission tests that will be held from May 31-June 1.

Unless new senior high school graduates secure tickets to private universities or find or create their own jobs, they will inflate the number of unemployed, which reached 8.12 million in February, according to the Central Statistics Agency.

The gap between the numbers of graduates, university seats and jobs will be seen next year and beyond, despite the government’s pledge to slash unemployment to 5 percent
by the end of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s term in 2014.

Many have cited public misconceptions and a flawed education policy as the missing link between schools and the job market — contrary to the once popular link-and-match campaign initiated by the National Education Ministry over a decade ago. That poisonous chemistry explains why vocational schools and polytechnics are less popular or perhaps overlooked despite the nation’s abundant need for skilled employees.

Since primary school Indonesian students have been taught to play it safe: Follow what the teacher says. The classroom has been reduced to a place for students to absorb instructions rather than to think out of the box. Entrepreneurship is absent from the national education system, preventing students from innovating or thinking creatively.

Transforming the education system into something that spreads the virus of entrepreneurship is a challenge that the government has been reluctant to accept.