Interview with Dr Edie Toet Hendratno of Pancasila University

Student Exchanges | Joint Research

Dr Edie Toet Hendratno, Rector

gbg	Pancasila University was established in 1966 as a merger of two universities, what can you tell us about the current strategy of the university to position it within Indonesia’s highly competitive education sector?
Dr Edie Toet Hendratno	On being appointed as the rector of the university eight years ago, I had to build up the university in the correct way to make sure that we remained competitive. In Indonesia, only 40% of high school students enrol in university so you must fight to get these students. The greatest competitors that we have are the government universities as these are trusted more than private universities by students. Therefore, I had to focus on the brand of the university for example we operate in a ‘green building’, also clear rules were set up to punish bad behaviour. I also encouraged teachers to improve the content of their courses to achieve higher accreditations so now we have the A rating just like the top state universities such as Universitas Indonesia. On the external side, I have been active in signing MOUs with universities from the Netherlands, South Korea and particularly Malaysia due to the cultural proximity. The university now has MOUs with five of the largest universities in Malaysia and this is for the purposes of our own benchmarking as well as student and lecturer exchange.
gbg	Universities in Indonesia have been criticised for not conducting sufficient research, how does the university approach internal research and development?
Dr Edie Toet Hendratno	The culture of research is not fully developed in universities in Indonesia and therefore the quality is not there as you see in the world’s top universities. We do realise that research is important and so this is why we have established MOUs with universities to do joint research together. Our objective for such MOUs is to join with universities that we believe are better than us in order to compare and improve our curriculum as well as to ensure best practices. As we are one of the top universities in Indonesia, we need to be a world class institution.
gbg	How is the university positioning itself for further international cooperation in the future?
Dr Edie Toet Hendratno	Teaching more of our courses in English is one of my main priorities although changing the culture is not easy. In the long term, one of the conditions for higher level accreditation is the number of foreign students so courses in English are really important for this. Recently, we won a competition held by the government for a grant to open an international office. This means that I will have an international office to build further relationships with universities abroad. This was an acknowledgement of all our efforts in securing MOUs in the past. Therefore I will concentrate on setting this up in the most appropriate market and secure more partnerships with universities in Asia such as China, South Korea as well as in Europe.