Universitas Gadjah Mada
Faculty of Economics and Business

Higher education is demanded to develop education that is responsive to meet industrial need of skilled human resource.

This emerged in a discussion hosted by Faculty of Economics and Business UGM, The Office of President Staff in cooperation with Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), at BRI Auditorium on Friday (9/3)

Economic lecturer from UGM, Gumilang Aryo Sahadewo, said human resource in Indonesia had experienced a mismatch with the job market. One of the reasons is the lack of relevance between higher education and industrial need.

“The design of curriculum is not responsive to the industrial need while job creators do not provide relevant human resource and skills that are needed by the industry, hence low productivity,” he said.

He saw that higher education had to be responsive to meet those demands, among others by developing relevant curriculum and study programme to the job market.

Another issue to address is the low connectivity between higher education and industry. This has caused the low information related to the need of human resource. “Collaboration between higher education and industry is very important to resolve the fundamental issue in Indonesia related to mismatched skills,” he said.

Practitioner and advisor to Indonesia Services Dialogue, Taufikurrahman, said currently higher education generated many graduates who were not much needed by the market or a few of graduates had skills relevant to the industrial need. This has made the gap widening between higher education and industry.

“A cooperation model needs to be developed between government, higher education, and industry to reduce such gap,” he said.

Secretary General in Research, Technology, and Higher Education Ministry, Prof. Ainun Na’im, said the government need to prepare National Qualification Framework for skilled and competitive human resource. The development of this should be made according to the industrial need.

Source: Ika/UGM