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

The Power of Peasant Community: A Sociological Prespective of Social Fact Paradigm

Nugraha Setiawan
Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, March 2008, 10(1): 58-67

Abstract.
The study is aimed at understanding of peasant community power phenomena in rural of Indonesia. The anlyzing used sosiological approach with “social facts” paradigm, what argued that its were external to, and coercive over, individuals, and then analyzed by the force relations phenomena of power theory of Foucault. The result of the study showed, peasant still has been powerless, because the dominating of urban community and institution of rural outsider. The conditions made peasant powerless more and more..
Keywords: power, peasant, rural, social fact.

Labor Structure and Labor Force Participation Rate in Rural of Indonesia: Analyse of 2006 National Labor Force Survey

Nugraha Setiawan
Journal of Socio Economics, June 2007, 13(1): 31-39

Abstract
The study is aimed at analyzing labor structure in rural area, by carrying out study on working age population, labor force, and labor force participation rate. Secondary data analysis approach was used in this study. The data form Sakernas (National Labor Force Survey) 2006 was analyzed by a descriptive statistical analysis. The result of the study showed that proportion of working age population and labor force in rural area it was more younger and lower education than urban area. However, if we take look at rural labor force participation rate was more higher than urban area, in the all of age and education attainment groups.
Keywords: age, education, labor force, labor force participation rate, rural.

The Change of Urban Concept in Indonesia: An Implication on Analyzed of Urbanization

Nugraha Setiawan
Journal of Population Studies, January 2006, 8(1): 1-10

Abstract
The difference and change of urban concept usually make the analyzed of urbanization more difficult. In spatial analyze, the difficult will find if has used a different urban concept with the other region in the same year, and also in a different time. Since population census 1961 until 2000, urban concept in Indonesia has changed four times, the same concept just used on 1980 and 1990. That changed had no implication to spatial analyzed, because the applied of that concept had to take place on the nation. But, it is very implicated to time series analyzed, because reclassification of region witch caused by a changed of urban concept.
Key words: urban concept, analyze of urbanization, Indonesia.