With roughly 10,000 international students, Indonesia is dwarfed by Singapore that hosts 65,000 non-Singaporeans and Malaysia that is a destination for a staggering 130,000 international students.

Indonesia is listed in the top 10 of the world’s emerging markets for businesses, and its language is considerably easier to learn than other Southeast Asian languages like Thai and Vietnamese, so it is already off to a great start for foreign students to pursue their education here.

Indonesia appears to be less attractive even though Singapore does not provide a stay back option after graduation and Malaysia is flooded with international graduates. Three challenges may be hindering the present efforts.

It goes without saying that Singaporean and Malaysian universities have more English-taught programs than Indonesian universities, which, of course, is a major pull factor for international students. Although this fact still does not justify Indonesia lagging behind Thailand.

With most local universities still teaching their programs in Thai, the universities with programs in English managed to attract more than 20,000 foreign students. In addition to the lack of English programs for foreigners at Indonesian universities, scholars have identified student visa processing issues as a major contributing factor, as well as the global image of Indonesia having poor education. The time-consuming process to navigate through the bureaucracy of visa applications prevents many institutions from guaranteeing the legality of their foreign students’ stay.

Furthermore, though universities have worked their way up the world rankings aggressively, like Gadjah Mada University (UGM), the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) and the University of Indonesia (UI), and private universities in Indonesia like BINUS University possess exceptional infrastructure and academically-rigorous professors, their reputation still does not travel far beyond the country. The main hurdle is, presumably, not the branding of the universities per se, but rather the branding of Indonesia as a destination for study.

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