BY: Hafid Abbas, (Vice Rector of UNJ 1997-1999)
As a part of the academic tradition in higher education, on July 4 2023, State University of Jakarta (UNJ) again inaugurated its three new professors namely: Dr Suherman, as professor at the Faculty of Economics in the field of Science Management; Dr Masduki as professor at the Faculty of Education in Education Management; and Dr Supadi, professor at the Faculty of Education, also in the field of Education Management.
Despite the three new professors have different fields of expertise, in their respective scientific orations, they raised up major concerns related to women’s empowerment, career promotion in education affairs, and the quality of education. These three fundamental issues are elaborated below.
First, Suherman in his oration on the Role of Women Executives in Company Policy and Performance raised a number of studies conducted in the US and Europe on the presence of women on company executive boards which are considered as indicators of better corporate governance. Thornton (2022) as one of the largest consulting organizations globally, released data for the last 12 years regarding the proportion of women on management boards in many countries. The data shows an increasing proportion of women in leadership positions which is getting better, reaching 32%, an increase of 8% in the last decade. In Southeast Asia, the proportion is even higher, at 37%.
Although in many cases, women’s professional reputation shows much better than men, but due to cultural stereotype, Suherman notes that promotion of women to executive positions remain lower than men. The same trend goes for the financial and business sectors.
However, Muhammad Yunus (1976) from the University of Dhaka has made a breakthrough to address such cultural barriers in his country. His trick, Yunus gave loans only to poor women bamboo crafters in Bangladesh. He started in Jobra, a poor village near Chittagong University, the crafters who were not bankable, with the support of Janata Bank, Yunus distributed his assistance of USD 27 (IDR 405,000) to each of the 42 poor women.
It turned out that they were each able to pay back their loans and even gave the bank a profit of USD 0.02 (IDR 3000). For this record, in 1982, a similar assistance was extended to reach other 28,000 poor women. Then, on October 1, 1983, the Yunus project was fully supported by the Grameen Bank (Bank Rakyat), and by July 2007, this bank had reached 7.4 million poor people (94% women) with funding support of USD 6.38 billion (IDR 95.7 trillion).
Interestingly to note Yunus’ breakthrough is that the loan repayment rate (microcredit) is close to 100%. This success was then extended to village phone ownership assistance to 260 thousand poor people so that their business and micro-economic enterprises networks grew rapidly in fifty thousand villages throughout Bangladesh (wikipedia.com).
It seems that UNJ, through the pioneering role of Suherman with his colleagues, could also initiate a similar effort to Yunus through his research and community service activities to improve the quality of life of the urban poor at greater Jakarta and other cities across Indonesia.
Second, Masduki in his scientific oration raised the issue of the Implementation of Talent Management in Higher Education.Talent management as a strategic effort to be carried out systematically to maintain and manage the excellence of human resources from the bottom to the top level to achieve organizational competitive advantage, has not been widely implemented in the area of education.
Masduki’s concern, indeed had been addressed by the UNESCO and ILO in their 1966 Convention: “Posts of responsibility in education, such as that of inspector, educational administrator, director of education or other posts of special responsibility, should be given as far as possible to experienced teachers.”(para. 43).
Very clear, these two UN bodies recommend that all positions in education affairs, such as: school principals, supervisors, directors, including the minister of education, or any position related to education affairs, has to be given a top priority to the most experience teacher to take it.
Career promotions and educational leadership positions apparently are not aligned with talent-based promotion as recommended by the UNs. For example, there are regional governments who take the position of head of the education office in their municipality or district or province from those with experience in wet market management, there are also those from funeral matters, etc. Even at the central level in the past, some important positions in educational affairs were filled from a termite expert, rock experts, water experts and other areas of expertise with connection to education affairs.
Such inconsistencies and mismatches, indeed only occur in a failed state or state under emergency with prolonged social conflict and tension which then put all positions in government as political matters, not technical issues. For example in Israel, the position of Minister of Justice (2015-2018) was once filled by an electrical engineer named Ayelet Shaked. It is clear that matters of electricity are of course very different from matters of justice.
Katerina Tomasevski, the UN Special Rapporteur on education in Indonesia (2002), also expressed similar concerns about career promotion in education. In his report, she revealed that, although the number of female teachers in elementary schools was 53% of the total number of teachers, only 27% were promoted to be school principals. At the junior high school level, out of 43% of female teachers, only 11% were promoted. Likewise, at the senior high school level, 34% of female teachers only 10% received promotions.
As a result, with a promotion pattern without blueprints or without consideration of expertise and talent backgrounds, even though the education budget has reached 20% of the national and regional budgets, but no impact to quality improvement. World Bank, in its publication: “Spending More or Spending Better: Improving Education Financing in Indonesia(2013)”, shows that teachers who have and who have not received certification allowances perform relatively the same achievements. The teacher certification program that has been implemented so far, with hundreds of trillion rupiah annually has shown no impacts to quality improvement of national education (p. 68).
Other data, the achievements of Indonesian children in the Program for International Student Assessment(PISA , 2018 ) is also so low. About 600 thousand students participated in the international competition arena. As a result, Indonesian students score on reading rank was at 72 out of 77 countries; mathematics scores at rank 72 out of 78 countries, and science scores at 70 out of 78 countries (Ministry of Education and Culture, 4/12/2019). Even within ASEAN, Indonesia rank is the second lowest out of the 10 ASEAN member countries, only surpassing the Philippines.
Worse conditions could likely again occur at PISA 2023 due to the covid-19 pandemic impacts that has just passed.
Third , Supadi in his remark highlighted the Development of the Principal’s Digital Leadership Assessment Model.The emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic has changed the learning process in schools from conventional face-to-face to virtual meetings with the use of digital technology devices. This technology is no longer just an additional tool, but has become a medium of instruction that functions more than just moving face-to-face classes into online classes. Here, the school principal as a technology leader is greatly demanded to ensure the acceleration of Information Communication Technology (ICT) integration into all learning and teaching activities in schools.
UNJ with its learning resource center (PSB) has a long history of experience since at the New Order era as one of the producers of innovative learning products which were broadcasted daily at Indonesian Education Television. This long experience has been maintained until now, and available to collaborate with any school which has constraints in managing its digital technology-based learning activities to improve the quality of education in a sustainable manner.
Hopefully in the future, there will be never and never any trial and error in education policy making as their risks are too fatal for the safety of our common future.