Indonesia’s Education Dilemma

The ASEAN Post Team,14 April 2019

This file photo shows Indonesian high school students take a selfie photograph to celebrate the finish of
the three-day 2014 national examinations at SMA Negeri 3 in Jakarta. (Romeo Gacad / AFP Photo)

Last October, Alibaba Group co-founder Jack Ma revealed that he was in discussion with the
Indonesian government regarding the possibility of opening an institute to train tech
entrepreneurs in the country. This, he said, would help Indonesia meet the skill demands of
Industry 4.0, also known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). Speaking on the side-lines of
the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank meetings in Bali, Ma, who is also an
adviser to the Indonesian government for e-commerce, revealed that Alibaba was also planning
to train hundreds of developers and engineers on cloud computing to help make Indonesian
businesses more digital-savvy.

Ma’s proposal comes as a real blessing as reports earlier that month revealed a lack of high-
skilled talent in the country. In an interview, Tom Lembong, the nation’s investment board chief
provided some interesting insight into the challenges of creating high-skilled talent when he
spoke of a conversation he had with a local partner to a Chinese company that has invested US$5
billion in an industrial park in Central Sulawesi.

“The local partner told us they posted jobs for 500 positions. Nine people signed up," he said.

In fact, as far back as 2016, the problem of a high-skilled labour shortage had been highlighted in
a report which quoted educationists, economists and business leaders. ko Prasetyo, director of the
Education Fund Management Institution, an arm of the Indonesian Ministry of Finance, said then
that the problem was quality skills and productivity.

“We have to produce more engineers. We have to produce more researchers. We can’t just be an
economy led by natural resources,” he enthused.

According to the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education, out of Indonesia’s six
million university and postgraduate students, 20 percent are majoring in Islamic studies and more
often than not, these graduates won’t find work in their chosen field of study.

A good position

But it’s not all doom and gloom for Indonesia. Unlike many other ASEAN countries, Indonesia’s
population is not an aging one.

According to the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) World Factbook, 25 percent of Indonesians
are between 0 to 14 years old, 17 percent are between 15 to 24 years old, 42.4 percent are 25 to
54 years old, 8.6 percent are 55 to 64 years old and only seven percent are 65 years or older.

INDOGRAPHIC
Source: Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook
On top of that, there is a lot of potential in Indonesia if We Are Social’s global digital report 2018
is anything to go by. According to the report, Indonesia came in third for the longest amount of
time spent on social media at an average of three hours and 23 minutes a day, showing that they
are no strangers to the digital world.

There is talent to sharpen and if Ma’s plans to open an institute to train tech entrepreneurs comes
to fruition then Indonesia could potentially create the high-skilled talent it needs to comfortably
embrace Industry 4.0. Ma, himself, has said that the target demographic would be Indonesia’s
youth.

“We’re giving a lot of opportunities for young Indonesians to learn,” he said.

First things first

While the prospect of an institute to train tech entrepreneurs would certainly put a smile on the
faces of a lot of Indonesians (the government included) but before even getting there, Indonesia
needs to first think about the problem its schools are facing in providing a quality education.
Apart from Indonesia’s consistently low rankings in the Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA) results, numerous reports have also indicated that there exists a problem
plaguing Indonesian schools. A report entitled “Beyond access: Making Indonesia’s education
system work” by Sydney-based Lowy Institute found that one of the main problems with
Indonesia’s education system stems from “politics and power”. The report claims that there is
little incentive for old elites to drastically overhaul the country’s education system, arguing that
they would rather exploit it to “accumulate resources, distribute patronage, mobilise political
support, and exercise political control.”

According to the Lowy Institute, problems which have stemmed from this lack of political will
include corruption, poor quality of teaching and staff absenteeism.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Indonesia has also said that in rural and remote
parts of Indonesia, early childhood development services are either absent, inaccessible or
unaffordable to most children, meaning they miss out on valuable early learning and
development opportunities that their urban counterparts receive.
The government is aware of the problem and has acknowledged that it needs to do something to
improve the education system. Numerous efforts have already been made to address the issue
including meetings with education ministers from fellow ASEAN countries.

While institutions that aim to help Indonesia and its people bridge the gap to Industry 4.0 would
certainly be welcomed in a country facing a serious shortage of high-skilled talent, Indonesia
must meet private organisations like the Alibaba Group halfway. Private organisations can build
the best training institutions in the world but if there aren’t any capable people to enrol in them,
what would be the point?

This article was first published by The ASEAN Post on 23 October 2018 and has been updated to
reflect the latest data.

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