In
a report on the state of education in Indonesia
Indonesia, home to 264 million people (2017, World Bank), is the fourth most populous country in the world. It is also the largest archipelago on the globe. Its territory spans more than 17,000 islands that stretch for 3,181 miles along the equator between the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
Indonesia, home to 264 million people (2017, World Bank), is the fourth most populous country in the world. It is also the largest archipelago on the globe. Its territory spans more than 17,000 islands that stretch for 3,181 miles along the equator between the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
About 87 percent of Indonesia’s population is Sunni
Muslim, making Indonesia the largest majority Muslim country in the world. But
the Southeast Asian country is simultaneously a diverse, complex, and
multicultural nation of more than 300 ethnic groups that speak hundreds of different languages. Some 10
percent of the population identify as Christians and about 1.7 percent as
Hindus.
Indonesia’s three largest ethnic groups are the
Javanese (40.1 percent), primarily located on Java, the world’s most populated
island and home to more than 50 percent of the total Indonesian population; the
Sundanese (15.5 percent); and the Malays (3.7 percent). Indonesia’s cultural
and regional diversity is as vast as the number of its islands. Areas like
rural West Timor or Indonesian Borneo (Kalimantan) are worlds apart from the
flashy shopping malls of downtown Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital city of about 10
million people.
According to Unesco, Indonesia’s literacy rate is
now high at around 95 per cent. Its youth literacy rate is even more impressive
at 99.67 percent. Nevertheless, other educational indicators illustrate a
bleaker picture, Walden notes, continuing that PISA ( Programme for
International Student Assessment ) tests conducted by the OECD in 2015
showed that Indonesian students were performing at lower levels in all areas –
science, mathematics and reading – than the OECD average.
A shocking 42 per cent of Indonesian students were
failing to meet minimum standards in all three areas covered by the test –
being outperformed by students in neighbouring Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand,
he notes in his report.
Indonesia is presently the 19th-largest
sending country of international students to the United States. The majority
(60 percent) of Indonesian students pursue undergraduate degrees,
while 14 percent enroll at the graduate level, 3 percent at the non-degree
level, and 8 percent participated in OPT. The most popular fields of study are STEM
fields (33.1 percent total), followed by business and management (28 percent).
Notably, five of the ten most
popular institutions among Indonesian students are community colleges, with
students at community colleges making up around 40 percent of all Indonesians
applying for U.S. student visas.
It’s unclear how student inflows from Indonesia will
develop in the future. In general, the U.S. higher education system is
attractive to Indonesian students for several reasons. The previously mentioned
AFS survey reflects the
high importance of English-medium instruction as well as country and institution
reputation in Indonesian students’ decisions to study abroad. On the other
hand, since the election of Donald Trump as president, the U.S. has become less
popular according to Indonesian public opinion polls.
Also, increasing tuition costs in the U.S. and the recent depreciation of the Indonesian
rupiah against the U.S. dollar make it more costly for Indonesians
to study Stateside. How well the U.S. can compete with Australia, Malaysia,
and, most recently, China in attracting Indonesian students remains to be seen.
Indonesian student enrollments in Canada are
comparatively small and have fluctuated over the past two decades—from 1,655 in
2004, down to 1,015 in 2010, and back up to 1,970 in 2018. Recent growth rates
have outpaced those in the U.S., possibly because of Canada’s expansion of
post-study work opportunities and immigration pathways for international students.
Overall, Indonesia is the 31st-largest sending
country of international students to Canada.
Daftar
pustaka :
