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We all want to be smart alecks — right?
Indonesian universities are staging “international conferences” headlined by overseas academics told to use English even when they are fluent in Indonesian. Often, they’re addressing a largely bewildered audience.
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Just nine Indonesian universities have made it into the 2020 Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) list of the world’s top 1,000 tertiary institutions. There are about 4,500 universities in the country. (Shutterstock/Yuttana Jaowattana)
It would be funny if it wasn’t such a floundering for relevance.
Indonesian universities are staging “international conferences” headlined by overseas academics told to use English even when they are fluent in Indonesian. Often, they’re addressing a largely bewildered audience.
It’s the response by some campus administrators to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s demands that tertiary educators lift their game and make Indonesia a clever country.
Recently Nadirsyah Hosen, a senior lecturer in law at Australia’s Monash University, told a conference at the Australian National University (ANU) that he’d been asked to present a particular paper on an Indonesian campus. However, when he delivered, he found another document had been downloaded “because it was more interesting”.
“It was clear few could understand what I was saying in English,” he said. “Later, when I used Indonesian, they came alive.”
Just nine Indonesian universities have made it into the 2020 Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) list of the world’s top 1,000 tertiary institutions. There are about 4,500 universities in the country.
The government reckons 77 percent are substandard; hence the call for help from abroad.
