LPDP promises better govt-funded scholarship

Educational Fund Management institution (LPDP) pledged to provide an improved quality of governmental scholarships for Indonesian citizens aiming to take graduate and postgraduate studies at home and abroad.

“Previously, there have been cases of late scholarship funding disbursement by some of the government-based scholarship programs. We, LPDP, intend to prevent such occurrence in our program through our commitment in providing on-time scholarship fund,” business development and funding planning director of LPDP at the Ministry of Finance M. Mahdum told future recipients of the LPDP scholarship during the opening day of the LPDP leadership programs on Wednesday in Jakarta. 

As many as 139 future recipients of LPDP scholarships gathered for 11 days from June 26-July 6 to take part in the final selection stage of LPDP scholarship scheme.

Inaugural launched this year, it is a joint scholarship scheme hosted by the country’s Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education and Culture and Ministry of Religious Affairs, aiming to provide full-scholarship funding for all Indonesian citizens, both from public and private sectors, seeking to take graduate and post-grad studies at home and abroad. The scholarship is the brainchild of the country's former finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, set up during the term of her successor Agus Martowardojo and inaugurated at the current term of finance minister Chatib Basri.

Mahdum said that continuity and punctuality of the scholarship were expected with LPDP’s organizational format of Public Service Agency (BLU-Badan Layanan Umum) that is fully authorized to manage its own Rp 15 trillion-worth of endowment fund allocated from the 20 percent education fund of the annual national budgets since 2010. 

The scholarship scheme was initiated due to awareness of the low quality and quantity of educated human resources that Indonesia currently still faced, despite McKinsey Global Institute’s estimation that Indonesia would become the seventh largest economy in the world by 2030 from the 16th largest as of today.  

According to 2011 data of the higher education directorate general at the Ministry of Education and Culture, the ratio of postgraduate degree holders in Indonesia are still very low compared to in other countries, like Malaysia, Iran and Japan. In Indonesia, only 98 people of 1 million population are indicated as postgraduate degree holder, while in Malaysia there are 509 per million, Iran 1,410 per million of population and Japan 6,438 per million of population.   As of today, Indonesia is home for only 55 million skilled workers, while in 2030, the country will requires around 113 million of skilled workers.  

“Many of our Indonesian students excel very well in various international competitions, but we don’t want their works to stop in books and prototypes. We want more of them to contribute in the industrial sector, and the key solutions are human resources development and innovations,” LPDP chief director Eko Prasetyo said.

For its inaugural year of dispatching the first batch of recipients, LPDP has shortlisted a total of 658 candidates that are required to participate at several phases of leadership programs. Wednesday’s leadership program was the second phase that saw a total of 139 participants, comprising of 82 master students abroad, 16 master students at home, 34 doctorate students abroad and 6 home doctorate.