Research universities face tough challenges

YOGYAKARTA: Indonesia’s higher education institutions are aiming to achieve status research universities even while facing tough rules and regulations to finance a minimum of 25 percent of their needs through their own activities, such as research, industrial partnerships and intellectual property rights.

Former Education and Culture Ministry director general of higher education, Bambang Soehendro, said on Monday that such a requirement was quite tough, possibly hampering efforts to establish more research universities in the country.

“Universities bear heavy burdens to self-finance a minimum of 25 percent of their financial needs. It is not logical and is unfair,” he told a discussion on research held by University of Gadjah Mada (UGM).

According to Bambang, although some universities have declared themselves a “research university”, they might still be far below the expected criteria.

“Most research universities in developed countries still depend on financing provided by governments for sponsorship funds provided by the industries on average reach less than 10 percent of total funds they need to finance their research,” said Bambang, as quoted by kompas.com news portal.

Most research funds received by universities from the US federal government, he cited as an example, reached 64.6 percent of the total budget.

Djagal Wiseso Marseno, Dean of the university’s School of Agriculture Technology, said that the research fund provided by the government for universities was quite small. The government allocated only less than 0.5 percent of its budget in 2009. “Budgetary allocations for research have continued to decline to less than one percent per year, whereas higher education institutions should produce quality research,” he said.