President Jokowi will increase the education budget, this is his goal

JABARNEWS | BANDUNG – President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) plans to increase the education budget allocation.

Not without reason, this aims to strengthen the research sector and increase the ratio of the Indonesian population who have completed master's and doctoral level education, which is currently still very low.

Jokowi said that the ratio of people who have completed master's and doctoral education in Indonesia is only around 0.4 percent. Meanwhile, neighboring countries have reached 2.43 percent, and developed countries have even reached 9.8 percent.

“It's a long way. I had a meeting this week and adopted a policy to catch up. We don't know where the budget will come from, but we are looking for it so that S2, S3, productive age can increase drastically. "Because this is very far away," said Jokowi, quoted by JabarNews.com from Suara.com, Monday (15/1/2024).

For research purposes, Jokowi plans to give instructions to the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) to act as research coordinator with the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) in designing research needs to overcome challenges and optimize existing opportunities.

More importantly, President Jokowi emphasized that the main key lies in universities, not just BRIN. "This is what needs to shift, that even though BRIN is the orchestrator, the role of universities in research and development must be strengthened," he said.

This means, according to him, that the budget for the Minister of Education, Culture, Research and Technology (Mendikbudristek) Nadiem Makarim will increase.

“It's okay to start this year. Later, the president will change. Starting first with the big ones, so the president will come and whether he wants to or not, he will continue. "Whether it's 01, 02 or 03, but it starts first," he said, quoted from Antara.

"It's impossible if Mr. Nadiem added, the President would not dare to interrupt then. Because of the opportunities ahead for the green and blue economy. "We need smart farming technology, we need bio energy technology, fast computing, fast analysis, all of which we must immediately prepare," he continued.

According to him, in civilization a country is given a great opportunity to become a developed country and Indonesia is given a demographic bonus.

"As soon as we can't take advantage of it, like Latin American countries in 1950 to 1960 were given the opportunity and couldn't take advantage of it, in the end, until now they are still developing countries, instead they have become poor countries, because they didn't take advantage of the opportunities given. And trapped in the middle income trap," said President Jokowi.

Therefore, he continued, the role of universities must be optimized. University rankings must continue to be improved based on QS World.

“Those ranked 200 and above are still very small. This is a big job. Even though Professor Mohammad Nasih had conveyed the existing complaints. I like being blunt like that. "But I have noted it and we will discuss it," said President Jokowi.

He understands that all these efforts require costs in the country's fiscal budget. According to him, HR is the key. For this reason, funding must be sought not only from the APBN and ABPD but also endowment funds, including linking with industry.

“The 2009-2024 state budget for education reaches IDR 6,400 trillion. LPDP's endowment fund, when opened, was IDR 1 trillion, in 2023 it will reach IDR 139 trillion. The number of scholarship recipients increased sevenfold. But it's still far and lacking. "It needs to be increased 5 times," he concluded. (Ed)

Check other news and articles at Google News