Education is often judged as the root of way out from poverty, and to avoid poverty, we need to jump into the labor market and get ourselves employed.
For a simple figure, education leads to the employment and employment creates earning while earning provides opportunity to fulfill basic needs—which means lifting us out of poverty line.
But the reality is, it is not as that simple equation. Gary Becker — 1992 Nobel Laureate in Behavioral Economics — may be right about the role of human capital to the national economic development. Therefore the question is, what kind of human capital needs to be focused on?
The empirical evidence from Indonesia could be interpreted many ways. Let me begin with the data from Indonesia’s Improvement on Some Main Socioeconomic Indicators by Statistics Indonesia as of February 2011. Based on the total number of young people between the ages of 15-24 years old, the labor force in this category is 20,156,449. Subsequently, based on the economically active population, 4,922,275 people are unemployed. Overall, almost 61% of the unemployment in Indonesia consists of young people between those ages.
According to the improvement and the use of technology in most companies today, there will be more declining occupations which are likely to happen in the future. So the good news is, we have a lot of human capital and will have it more in the future.
In some rural areas in Indonesia, the access to study is still difficult. And, once they have access, students face the high cost, both financial and social, of enrolling in school. When they enter school, students simply cannot state what has been learned after finishing school each day.
The problem of unemployment is partly attributable to the fact that the education system offers curricula that are not relevant to the world of work. Big portions of students admit that most of their time is wasted in “studying” rather than “learning”.
Therefore, what is the point in having a lot of human capital which is available to be absorbed, if they are not prepared to enter the workforce? The bad news is, we actually have less working capital.
We are driven back to the earlier question—what kind of human capital needs to be focused on then? Looking from the perspective of human and working capital, it is simply about the matter of quality above quantity. Unfortunately, the solution is not as cheap as talk.
At one time, I met a businessman from Indonesia who has worked in Singapore for years. In our conversation, he told me that:
“If you want to work in Indonesia, you don’t need to be qualified in certain things, you just need to be a mediocre and all you have to do is broaden your networks, and they who know you well, will hire you. It’s different if you want to work here. They don’t pay attention of who you are, rather what you bring to benefit them.”
It is already proven that the difference between education in Indonesia and abroad primarily derives from its goals. In many developed countries, education is likely to be particularly important for gaining recognition of one’s skills and qualification, whereas in Indonesia, it is probably more important for the accumulation of local knowledge and the building of social networks. It is ironic, but true.
Furthermore, it could be the absence of a meritocratic culture that also forces the government to be more reliant on the pursuit of numbers rather than beyond. Whether students are good enough or not is insignificant. The literacy rate increases, so does the enrolment rate, and Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) are accomplished.
Since in the end, the student’s own effort to build networks is the only key to being accepted and employed. From a young person’s view, this practice of collusion discourages them to learn and the misperception on the meaning of competition leads them to be a passive rather than actively involved in learning activities. For them, competition means hurting friends, rather than expressing their own competency and knowledge within the class.
Generally speaking, it needs to be clearly defined, whether from the government, private sector, parents, teachers, or young people’s perspectives as to what kind of future education Indonesia wants to achieve.
Employment is not derived from the significant increasing in school enrollment rates, but comprises of in-depth socioeconomic matters and beyond.
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