Universities in Indonesia are having difficulties matching the world’s prominent universities and even Asia’s best.
None of our universities are on the list of the 100 best Asian
universities in 2013, according to Times Higher Education, while
Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia have institutions on the list. Despite
the abundant resources spent by the government on improving the quality
of education, it seems our “best universities” cannot even be the best
(or even close to the best) in ASEAN, let alone in Asia or globally.
Here are some problems we face in improving our higher education system.
First, the best people do not become lecturers. All parents, if they had
the choice, would pick the best people to teach their children. It is
widely accepted that the quality of education systems cannot exceed the
quality of teachers.
However, the best students have no desire to become lecturers. They
usually go to large multinational companies, which compete aggressively
to recruit our best graduates. Some companies provide scholarships to
top students, with the agreement that the students must work for the
companies following graduation.
On the contrary, our universities do not usually have clear recruitment
strategies and procedures. University officials are mostly very passive
and not very creative when it comes to recruiting new lecturers. Faculty
staff do not bother to attract talented candidates or seriously look at
selecting the best students who could become excellent teachers.
Second, there is no financial security for lecturers. The main salary of
a lecturer is insignificant compared to those with similar education
levels who work in other industries. Low salaries make university
lecturer positions unattractive to the country’s best and brightest.
There are many great Indonesian PhD holders who have opted to teach in
universities abroad, earning much more than they would have done working
in Indonesian universities. Unfortunately, we cannot expect them to
return to Indonesia to strengthen our educational systems for many
reasons, one being the amount of salary involved.
Further, faculty members resort to other sources of income to survive.
The side jobs include teaching in other universities, becoming
consultants, establishing a business and public speaking. These side
jobs have significantly distracted our lecturers from their commitment
to the quality of higher education.
As a result, being a lecturer is a full-time job only on paper. Some are
even willing to cancel classes for these side jobs, especially if the
jobs provide significant monetary incentives. Further, many offices of
lecturers are vacant most of the time. This would never happen in good
universities with established governing systems.
Therefore, if the Education and Culture Ministry has difficulties
finding ways to absorb the 20 percent budget from the government, it
might start thinking about increasing the salaries of university
lecturers.
Third, reward and punishment systems are ineffective. University
lecturers are perceived as the most valuable assets to the academic
institutions. In fact, some argue the lecturers are the university
itself, as most decisions concerning the institution are made by
lecturers. However, these so called “assets” can be classified into
three groups: Operating assets, non-operating assets and troubled
assets.
Many faculty members are great teachers, productive researchers and
effective administrators (operating assets), while some of them are
ineffective in their main assignments (non-operating assets), and there
are usually a few who create chronic problems for the institution and
who are persistent in their bad behavior (troubled assets).
Ideally, the operating assets are rewarded, the non-operating assets are
warned or further trained and the troubled assets are “liquidated”.
Unfortunately, what sometimes happens is that the institution punishes
the high performing (usually young) lecturers by giving them more
assignments (with no financial incentives), while the university does
not have the authority to warn misbehaving, or fire troubled lecturers.
Fourth, there is too much teaching and not enough research. To promote
research, world-class universities usually limit teaching loads to three
or fewer courses per semester for their faculty. Some lecturers hired
to conduct research will teach even fewer classes.
College deans are pure administrators and they do not usually teach, while department heads might teach one class per semester. Their income is not dependent upon how many classes they teach as they receive a fixed salary, and the teaching load is agreed during the hiring process.
Yet in Indonesia, many lecturers are severely overloaded as they might
teach more than 10 classes per semester — with financial incentives for
teaching more classes. Even deans, department heads and other officials
sometimes teach many classes. Thus, it is difficult for a lecturer to
control his teaching quality and to find time for research.
What usually happens is that our lecturers will co-author studies with
their students and shift the research workload to the students. In good
universities, most lecturers co-author with other lecturers. This
difference in research partnerships definitely affects the quality of
research.
Even lecturers in a so-called “teaching university” abroad do not usually teach more than five classes per semester.
A university in Indonesia wanting to declare itself a “research university” should limit the teaching load of its faculty members to provide space for research. We need to establish a compensation system to reduce the teaching load without lowering the income, and a system that fosters research.
The writer is a lecturer at the School of Economics and Business, Gadjah
Mada University (UGM) in Yogyakarta. He has lectured in the US and the
Middle East.
source : http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2013/12/07/ri-universities-cannot-compete-internationally.html
