1. Background
The government of Indonesia has recently launched the MP3EI (Master Plan for Acceleration and Expansion of Indonesia Economic Development), intended to drive the realization of high, balanced, fair and sustainable economic growth, through two key factors, i.e. acceleration and expansion [MP3EI, 2011]. MP3EI envisions national development based on seven economic corridors, with aspirations to promote geographically balanced growth. Universities are expected to play critical roles not only in providing key human resources to meet the national and regional development needs, but also in becoming key ‘knowledge base’ for the regions so that regions can develop appropriate economic activities with increasingly higher value added. Given the status of economic development in Indonesia, the roles expected of universities are different in different locales, but can be categorized into the following three levels:
Level 1: Working with local (or potentially local) industry and government to provide relevant undergraduate and diploma level education
Level 2: Working with local (or potentially local) industry and government to develop strategic R&D capacity to address emerging or future industrial needs of regions
Level 3: Working with national and international industry and government to develop S2 and S3 programmes of relevance to industry so that they can contribute to R&D capacity development of industry
Today, none of Indonesian universities are equipped to perform such roles adequately. Inadequacies to deal with level 1 needs are demonstrated by the fact that there are many locales particularly outside Jawa, where industry is hard pressed to recruit relevant undergraduates or diploma holders.
There are hardly any established R&D centres known for their collaborative work with industry in themes relevant to regional economic needs – to meet level 2 needs. As far as level 3 is concerned, most research programmes in established institutions are still academically oriented, with research degrees such as S3 designed for academic jobs with little attention given to emerging or future industrial requirements.
Currently such roles have not been actively played by universities, mainly because their capacity to engage with industry has been limited. It is essential that this tradition of isolated institutional development for universities is broken so that universities begin to develop along with the needs of the society. It is critically important that universities in outer islands plan new S1 programmes in consultation with local emerging and future needs. It is essential that applied research centres are developed in key locales to meet regional needs. As R&D interests emerges in some segments of industry (e.g. as found in pharmaceutical companies in Indonesia today), it is the right moment for research oriented institutions to engage with them to plan research-oriented degrees at S2 and S3 so that university research capacity develops in conjunction with R&D capacity in industry.
This capacity development program proposes to provide significant grant assistance to universities, so that they can build better institutional capacity to deliver more relevant education and research on the basis of close dialogue with industrial and government stakeholders.
2. Objectives
The objectives of this funding program are to,
a) Improve university ability to work with local stakeholders such as industry and government in planning its capacity development,
b) Improve university capacity to deliver (i) undergraduate and diploma programmes, (ii) applied research and development services to assist industry to move up to higher value added production and services; and (iii) research-based post graduate education to meet the needs of emerging R&D activities in industry
3. Scope of the program
It is critical for universities to acquire the commitment of relevant stakeholders from industry and government, in order to participate in this program. The program will include support for graduate fellowship, start-up R&D grants, domestic and international technical assistance, travel, laboratory equipment, industrial exchange program, and twinning arrangement with national as well as international institution.
Depending on the strength of the proposal, the fund provided by this program is in the range of IDR 15 to 20 billion over 3-5 years period, excluding the contribution from the local industries and government partners. A twinning arrangement with more established national or international universities would be strongly encouraged, and may be ‘required’ when proposing institutions are deemed to have in adequate expert capacity in the domains envisaged..
4. Eligible proponents
Eligibility will be different for different level proposals:
Group 1: only universities located in the economic corridor of Sulawesi – North Maluku, Maluku – Papua, and Kalimantan are eligible to submit proposal. The proposal must be developed in partnership with the local industries and government.
Group 2: only universities located in the economic corridor of Sumatera, and Bali – Nusa Tenggara Group 3: only universities with a good track record in research, as demonstrated by the research training and track records of academic staff, credibility of establishing S3 programmes
Since the heart of capacity building lies in successful collaboration between universities, industry and local government in the planning process, the program could start with seed grants to fund planning and proposal development in collaboration with industry and government, which will be selectively provided based on pre-proposals submitted by institutions. The capacity development grants to support the actual implementation will be awarded based on full proposals thus developed and evaluated.
The up to IDR 200 million seed grant can provide support for time-relief for university staff, national technical assistance, workshops, and travel to the local industries, e.g. plantation, mining, hatcheries, or breeding sites. For some pre-proposals, where aspirations make sense, but where institutional capacity to develop full proposals seems inadequate, the funding agency may assign technical assistance to help develop the full proposals.
The full proposals should outline what kind of education/research capacity would be developed and how, and should include some matched funding from local government and industry.
5. Institutional framework
The program requires institutional capacity building of the kind that has never taken place before. It will be necessary to explore new implementation arrangements at local as well as national levels, with flexibility to involve industry as well as government partners. It is also likely that capacity building will require international collaboration on specific topics. For this reason, we strongly recommend an involvement of an international donor agency, to provide a better framework for experimentation, involving international expertise. The actual capacity building would be funded mainly by the government fund, but with contributions from local industries as well as local government.
In order to ensure smooth planning and operation, with expected interdiscipolinary capacity, it is likely that the program requires universities to establish new units/organizations that are legally separate and can be accountable along with the universities, rather like Fraunhoffer in Germany.
With or without such a new structure, it is anticipated that a special tri-partite board shall be established to oversee the implementation of this program at the institutional level. The institutional arrangement shall be in such a way that the financial management comply with the prevailing regulation, whilst at the same time able to provide sufficient felxibility for the industrial collaboratiive activities.
An oversight committee should be established to regularly monitor the implementation. The committee comprises representatives from local universities, industries, local as well as central government.