In-class session: A teacher is checking answer sheets of grade 5 students at Palmerah State Primary School 07, West Jakarta.(JP/DON)

May 2, commemorated in Indonesia as National Education Day, is the birthday of Indonesian educational figure Ki Hadjar Dewantara, whose visionary ideas serve as the foundation of national education across the nation.

Focused on teacher-based education, Ki Hadjar Dewantara proclaimed a series of ideas for Indonesian education comprising Ing Ngarso Sung Tulodo (providing examples at the front), Ing Madya Mangun Karso (raising spirit from the middle) and Tut Wuri Handayani (encouraging from behind) and implemented these tenets at the Taman Siswa School. His initiatives pioneered education reform in Indonesia.

Establishing the INS Kayu Tanam educational center in West Sumatra, another Indonesian educational figure, Moh. Syafei, proposed a skills-based education filled with practical work. This would later set the foundation for the development of vocational schools in Indonesia. Moh. Syafei also achieved an early form of educational reform in Indonesia.

We commemorate National Education Day to celebrate the countless historical figures in education – all of whom, indeed, deserve our highest tribute.

More than simple remembrance, however, we commemorate National Education Day to reflect upon the various efforts that we have made, will continue to make, to improve the quality of higher education across the nation. This journey serves as a milestone in our effort to provide quality higher education for our nation’s children, to increase our capacity to create industrially competitive technological innovations and ultimately to improve the competitiveness of the nation.

It is with this framework that we commemorate this year’s National Education Day under the theme “Let’s Work, Be Innovative and Competitive”. This theme serves as a call to everyone in the higher education system to work together to reform higher education. As the father of our education system stated decades ago, higher education reform is an inevitability and we are faced with numerous extraordinary challenges on the provincial, national and global stage.

Through higher education, we prepare science and technology human resources whom, entering a diverse work environment, will soon compete in both the national and international labor market. How can our university graduates have the competence to work in a 21st century world, when higher education management remains the same as it was in the 19th century?

Furthermore, the proliferation of inter-networking, information and communications technology and a knowledge-based economic society has triggered an uncompromising paradigm shift in higher education management. There is much work to be done to reform higher education management – deregulation, the provision of flexible education oriented toward the student and the market, curriculum changes, provision for professional lecturers, professors and education professionals, an education system that is adaptable to scientific and technological development, a new business model for education, orientation towards competitive and tested skills, development of strategic scientific fields, institutional revitalization, improvement of higher education’s capability to produce competitive research and innovations and other duties.

Let us all work together. Let us focus on reforming higher education through innovative means and to produce numerous competitive innovations from our higher educational institutions.

Ki Hadjar Dewantara

We have produced many innovations that we can be proud of. In 2015, according to the World Economic Forum, Indonesia’s innovation index was 4.6, which ranked 30th globally, while our higher education innovation index was 4.0 or 60th globally. We still need to work in an innovative manner so that we may improve Indonesia’s higher education innovation index rank to 56 by 2020. The index shows that we still have to produce many technological innovations to resolve the problems in the life of our nation. Next, globalization has also increased the competition at the institutional, national and international levels.

Currently, Indonesia’s competitiveness index as measured by the “higher education and training” indicator shows that in 2014-2015, Indonesia was ranked 60th with a competitiveness index of 4.5. This is to say that there are many countries with a higher competitiveness index than Indonesia and this decreases Indonesia’s rank. We must not ignore this fact.

Let us all work competitively and with a spirit of innovation to produce highly skilled science and technology human resources and highly competitive technological innovations. Set this as the main higher education goal. In this framework of competitiveness, we can no longer manage higher education through the means and quality standards that we have applied thus far to answer future challenges. The quality standards that we applied yesterday are vastly different from those we need to achieve tomorrow. The speed with which we need to achieve these qualities is also vastly different.

On the other hand, globalization and the presence of the ASEAN Economic Community has paved the way for cooperation in education, researce and technological development between higher educational institutions, research agencies and local and international industries. To improve the quality of our higher education and obtain global acclaim, cooperation is a major strategy in the framework of competitiveness. Cooperation strengthens our respective abilities so as to enable us to acquire a greater capacity, to create better technological innovations. Student and lecturer exchange programs as well as cooperation in research and scientific publications are equally integral to higher education reform.

It will be impossible for the government to walk alone in its effort to reform higher education. Indonesia has 4,438 universities, more than seven million college students and 300,000 lecturers. These are our national wealth. To conduct reform at a macro scale, cooperation between higher education institutions, research institutions, various governmental work units, the industrial and private sectors and other stakeholders is necessary.

In this framework, I invite all relevant parties to participate, to make real contributions to higher education reform and to establish a truly innovative and competitive higher education. Let us all realize our nation’s dream of higher education development with a spirit of educational reform, as proposed by our nation’s father of education and other education figures and leaders, and carry out efforts to improve the quality of our higher education through sustainable means. (Prof. Mohamad Nasir)
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The writer is the Research, Technology and Higher Education Minister of the Republic of Indonesia .