Raising the Community Development and Empowerment Spirit
Current development nowadays demands the educational world to be more dynamic. The right curriculum and teaching methods will be able to produce graduates that not only smart, but also can encourage the society to develop. Raising the community development and empowerment spirit is the vital key.
The right education will make the young generation become more ready to compete in global and international scope. This more challenging competition can’t be separated from the continuous development of technology. For that reason, educational institutions continuously encourage the students to master the technology and also develop their creative ideas.
That was brought up by the Rector of BINUS UNIVERSITY, Prof. Dr. Ir. Harjanto Prabowo, MM. “We often lose the competition from other countries because beside the non maximal skills, also because the lack of mastery of technology. We are less-skilled, less-creative, not because less-educated. The reason why there are students out there that can create great animation, is because of skills.”
The lack of creativity or ablility to create something, Harjanto continued, is not because we don’t have the ability, but because the educational institutions that can’t open the insight. Higher educational institutions are not only continuations from the basic and middle-level education, but also have to offer solutions to the community and nation.
As an international-level higher educational institution, Bina Nusantara (BINUS) understands this phenomenon and always keep up with the current development. “BINUS realize that the challenge in educational world is always changing. That’s the reason why we are dynamic and continuously keeping up with the times, we have to be able to keep up with the constantly increasing needs. The point is, all processes in every stage must be considered, the curriculum can’t be rigid, must be as flexible as possible, he added.
Developing the Nation
In its involvement in developing education in Indonesia, BINUS introduced the BINUS Higher Education System as an effort to offer wider opportunity for the young generation in various places to be able to become creative and qualified individuals. Not only in the capital, student candidates who live in other cities are expected to be able to enjoy education with similar level.
“We want to fulfill BINUS’ dream, developing the Nation (membina Nusantara, red). A total of 30-35 percents of the students here came from other cities. For that reason, we set up learning centers and campuses in other cities, like Bekasi, Bandung, Semarang, Malang, and Palembang. The operational in Malang has been started already, for Bekasi, we hope the campus will be ready in 2018,” said Stephen W. Santoso, the President of BINUS Higher Education.
Although the campuses are spread in various areas, Stephen continued, all of them are integrated and have similar contents. BINUS applies similar system and the campuses are not separated from the center. Therefore, there will be a lot of functions that can be shared by BINUS Jakarta that already exists. The development of contents, lecturers, and system will be applied in other BINUS’ campuses that are spread in various cities.
The quality offered by BINUS outside Jakarta is similar with the quality of BINUS Jakarta. Basically, he continued, the system used is similar, not as two different universities but as one education system and management quality. “Initially, the core team is an experienced team from Jakarta. The application, IT, and learning system are ready to be used. So, it was not started from zero,” he explained.
In the next five years, BINUS also incessantly develops internet-based (online) education system. “We are now currently developing the online-based education. Currently, we already have BINUS Online Learning. Because of its flexibility, this program offers a great opportunity for them who want to get qualified education, without any difficulty that is caused by geographical location,” Stephen added.
Meanwhile, because of its sensitivity to the continuously developing educational world, BINUS is able to obtain bright accomplishments, such as Accreditation “A” from Akreditasi Institusi Perguruan Tinggi (AIPT)-BAN PT, achieve an award as the Best Private College since 2012 from Kopertis wilayah III, and obtain The 2016 Most Admitted Knowledge Enterprise Title.
BINUS also obtain the Awarded World’s 3-star University by QS Stars University Ratings, a world-level accreditation Engineering Accreditation Commission from ABET, and EPAS accreditation from EFMD.
The Challenges and Spirit
Presenting qualified education that is spread in various places is not an easy task. Everything needs to be prepared well and profoundly. “We have to prepare the system, where the component consists of curriculum, technology, contents, and human resources. Each of them has its own challenges, especially the human resources. Preparing human resources with similar quality with the ones in Jakarta is not easy,” said Harjanto who also is the Vice President of BINUS Higher Education.
In one side, Harjanto continued, it is an opportunity for the lecturers to be able to thrive in other places. “Certainly they have goals, family, but in here they receive challenges to grow continuously. We are also cooperating with another party in building educational institution so everything can run maximally.”
BINUS’ presence in the community is in accordance with the spirit in Fostering & Empowering the Society in Building & Serving the Nation. With that spirit, BINUS is expected to be able to educate and enrich the community’s insight and capabilities. The graduates produced are in charge to empower the society, not only capable for their own selves. They have to encourage the society to change for the better.
Aside from producing skilled and tech-savvy young generation, BINUS also prepares its graduates with entrepreneurial spirit. “Aside from producing graduates who can compete in global-scale, we are preparing entrepreneurs who have capabilities to create job opportunities. In addition to six credit units for entrepreneurship, there are also specific tracks. We have a 3+1; campus-based in three years and one year outside the campus. One of the tracks is to become entrepreneurs,” Harjanto explained.
(KOMPAS/January 15th, 2017)
