Indonesia: High Graduate Unemployment

David Jardine

Leading universities in the world’s fourth most populous nation are making serious efforts to deal with high unemployment among their graduates. The situation facing Indonesia is typical of other developing countries.

The data and analysis centre of Tempo, the country’s leading current affairs weekly magazine, broke fresh ground last year with its Guide to Universities and Job-matching Programs of Study. Reflecting the widespread unease at the high annual rate of graduates either failing to find work or having to settle for apparently unsuitable positions, the Tempo centre set out to assess the ‘marketability’ of graduates from the nation’s top 10 universities.

The study covered state and private institutions and found that in Indonesia, “the higher one’s education the smaller the chance one will get a job”. Research by Jobs DB, an Indonesian employment information service, reported that 50% of graduates were trained in disciplines that did not match job openings.

This leads directly to the perception that universities are not paying attention to the needs of the market and changes in it. Some institutions, however, were found by the centre to be conducting market research and carrying out internal reforms.

These included the number one-placed University of Indonesia (UI), which has a mandatory English-language element to its placement test, and the Bogor Institute of Agriculture, which networks with agricultural bodies.Some institutions now have links with companies through apprenticeship schemes for undergraduates. The Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) has developed these through its engineering faculty.

A number of leading institutions, among them UI and ITB, Gajah Madah University in Jogjakarta and the November 10 University in the East Java capital Surabaya, have joined an Asia-wide university consortium to improve practice. This has resulted in a number of them being placed in the Times Higher Education Supplement-QS World Top 500 rankings, with UI at 250, ITB at 258, Gajah Madah at 270 and Diponegoro University at 495.

One relevant item of assessment in the Times Higher table was the market absorption of graduates.Leading education reform campaigner, Professor Mochtar Buchorim, is one of those who believe the nation’s heavily bureaucratised education system is in need of a comprehensive overhaul. This would necessarily require replacement of the standardised multiple-choice national university entrance examination.

Source: http://www.universityworldnews.com