Indonesia's President Prabowo Subianto has decided to split the previously unified Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology into three distinct entities, namely the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education, the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology, and the Ministry of Culture.

The Minister of Higher Education, in his first meeting with Parliament, said of the government’s vision for the higher education sector over the five years: “What we want to see is the impact of higher education towards Indonesia's national development".

Over the next five years, Indonesia’s higher education policy will be oriented towards active participation in the government’s development agenda as well as towards achieving development targets set by the President and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), particularly the goals of developing skilled and productive science talents, improving the capacity of higher education institutions (HEIs) and developing an R&D ecosystem.

The government has set an ambitious target for the economy to achieve 8 per cent growth by 2028/2029. In his first address to the Parliament during the inauguration, President Prabowo had also set out some broad development targets related to poverty reduction, food security, energy sufficiency, access to clean water, targeted subsidies, industry down streaming, and corruption eradication.

What does it mean for the UK sector?

It is still too early to know how these high level objectives will translate into measurable programmes. At this point, there are considerable challenges facing Indonesia’s higher education institutions which will need to be sufficiently addressed before they are able to contribute to Indonesia’s national development agenda effectively. According to the Minister, with whom British Council Indonesia had a meeting with recently, those challenges are:

  • Mismatch in skills and knowledge, which is reflected in poor graduate employability and a rise in the unemployment rate among university graduates from 4.8 per cent in 2022 to 5.2 per cent in 2023.
  • Weak R&D ecosystem resulting in a lack of support for science talents seeking to pursue a career in science and technology fields.
  • Policy and regulation that change too often and which create uncertainty, hindering efforts to achieve national development goals.
  • Misalignment between the curriculum and research priorities of higher education institutions with the needs and challenges of society.
  • Weak effectiveness and quality of research conducted through the utilisation of the government’s research fund. Indonesia’s research budget is limited while the research conducted by universities is often not of high quality and impactful.

We anticipate more clarity in the coming year on how the Ministry will address those challenges in practice. We advise UK universities to use the above bullets as talking points when engaging Indonesia stakeholders, providing insight on how the UK and UK HEIs are well-placed to support the Ministry and Indonesia's HE sector to address those challenges.

British Council contact details:

Muhaimin Syamsuddin

Head of Education, Indonesia

muhaimin.syamsuddin@britishcouncil.org

Sources:

TVR Parlemen (Indonesia Parliament Broadcaster), first meeting between Parliament and Minister for Basic and Secondary Education, Minister for Higher Education, Science and Technology, and Minister for Culture, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HY14mUQj9I&t=10014s

President Prabowo inaugural speech, https://nasional.kompas.com/read/2024/10/20/13344741/isi-lengkap-pidato-perdana-presiden-prabowo-subianto-usai-pelantikan?page=all