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Needs are now, fixes maybe come later
Is Indonesia expecting Australia to help rescue the nation’s education system? That’s not as implausible as it sounds.
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Flags of Indonesia and Australia with a white flag in the middle. (Shutterstock/-)
I
s Indonesia expecting Australia to help rescue the nation’s education system? That’s not as implausible as it sounds. Outsiders are involved elsewhere in the economy. Transportation infrastructure development relies heavily on massive loans from banks in Japan and China and on technical expertise from the same sources. Think MRT and the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail project.
The republic already depends on farmers in Vietnam and Thailand growing enough rice to feed their hungry neighbor, so why not foreigners in technical colleges and universities?
The doors are now slightly ajar to what was once a no-go zone. The recently inked Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IA-CEPA) allows Australian campuses to set up shop in Indonesia.
At the signing Vice President Jusuf Kalla reportedly said: “Indonesia’s next big agenda is to improve its human resources to boost our competitiveness and readiness to face the future, so I’m waiting for investment in universities as well as vocational and training education in Indonesia.”
It’s likely to be a long wait even though the demands are here and huge. Millions of parents want their youngsters to be well prepared to meet the challenges ahead and for their nation to reach its potential.
It’s an archipelago of opportunity for Australia’s high-quality education sector, but the IA-CEPA alone would not be enough to help Kalla’s agenda.
Here’s why: The issues around education are compound-complex. They include inadequate funding, human resource deficits, perverse incentive structures and poor management, but most fundamentally they are a matter of politics and power. Foreign experts can assist with curricula and administration, but the rest is for Indonesians only.
