Indonesia explores collaborations with US for education

JAKARTA: In an effort to improve the education sector in the country, Indonesia has explored collaboration opportunities with leading universities in the United States.

Education, Culture, Research, and Technology Minister, Nadiem Anwar Makarim, said this in a statement issued here on Thursday, according to Antara news.

He said his visit to the US this week was to show how serious the government is in transforming higher education in the country.

Nadiem said he had two targets in the visit, one of which was to implement various breakthrough learning programmes between the countries and the second was to encourage more cooperation with universities, research institutions and museums.

Nadiem said he met several key leaders of the world’s top colleges, such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Northeastern University, Harvard University, and Georgetown University.

At MIT, he met with the President of MIT, Leo Rafael Reif.

“I learned a lot from one of the best engineering education institutions in the world, namely MIT, especially in their attempts to conduct research, transformation, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Those attempts are also being implemented in Indonesia,” he said.

He also got to promote the ministry’s programmes to officials at Northeastern University and discuss cooperation plans with Georgetown university.

At Harvard University, he met with a number of professors from the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School, as well as the Executive Director of the Harvard Centre for International Development, to exchange ideas.

The ministry plans to send 150 informatics teachers to study asymmetric learning at Harvard University, he said.

“I really hope that in the future more teachers will graduate from this program and be able to share their knowledge with other teachers,” he said and concluded his visit by delivering a lecture at the Harvard Business School.

NST