UK Part of Team Assisting Higher Education in Indonesia

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Feb. 21, 2012) — The University of Kentucky is part of a team receiving a $19.7 million contract from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for a five-year project to develop institutional capacity and independence in Indonesian higher education. 

The Higher Education Leadership and Management project (HELM) will provide technical assistance to the Indonesian Directorate General for Higher Education (DIKTI) to expand leadership and management skills among Indonesian higher education institutions. As DIKTI has historically controlled the institutions' budgets and decision-making processes, the project is designed to guide the schools in areas like financial management, general administration, quality assurance and collaboration with external stakeholders as the institutions gain greater autonomy.

UK is one of only two academic entities to receive subcontracts within the larger project; UK’s role in the project, involving $515,000, will send many campus faculty and administrators to serve as consultants to their Indonesian counterparts.

The team will be led by Chemonics International Inc., a development consulting firm headquartered in Washington DC. It includes UK; a consortium comprised of Indiana University, University of Illinois, Ohio State University; and JBS International — a consulting firm located in Washington D.C. that provides services in the fields of IT, research and evaluation, international public health, policy analysis and communications.

Chemonics has worked with governments, businesses, civil society groups and communities in more than 135 nations around the world.  Its work includes projects in financial services; democracy and governance; private sector development; conflict and disaster management; health; environmental management; gender; and agriculture.

"When Chemonics International submitted their bid for this contract, they were looking for partners with broad experience and significant visibility in Indonesia who would add credibility to their proposal," said Susan Carvalho, associate provost for international programs at UK. "We are glad to be working with such a qualified group and also glad that our past work in Indonesia, dating back to the 1950s, can be carried even further through this major initiative." 

UK's involvement in the project is three-fold. First, the team will send groups of administrators specializing in areas like strategic planning, budgeting, financial aid and admissions to visit 10 institutions in Indonesia. The administrators will help develop a methodology for assessing the institutions' current status and preparedness for autonomy in terms of leadership and management. The institutions across Indonesia can then use the methodology.

The second phase will involve sending teams to institutions that have been particularly successful in academic quality assurance from a leadership-management perspective.

"The purpose (of the second phase) is to show how those programs can serve as models to other institutions that are just becoming autonomous," Carvalho said.

The last phase will incorporate the lessons from the first two phases. The administrators will assist DIKTI in developing a curriculum for training higher education leaders in the future.

Carvalho traveled to Indonesia in January 2011 to begin specific planning for the HELM project. She said the operation will be mutually beneficial, enhancing higher education across Indonesia and as well as at the University of Kentucky.

"One of our main reasons for agreeing to participate in this project is that it will help us align our own processes with the evolving state of Indonesian institutions, so that we can develop better relationships with our own partner institutions there," Carvalho said. "We hope to be able to send UK students there for credit and bring their students here either as visitors or as transfer students, since we understand that greater student mobility is one of the long-range objectives of the USAID project."

There is also strong potential for research collaboration and other partnerships with Indonesian faculty members.

"We can also be involved in helping their faculty members earn Ph.Ds., since many of them now teach with master's degrees instead of doctorates," Carvalho said.

Since 1956 UK’s projects, which have been primarily grant funded, have enabled UK to work with numerous Indonesian universities.  UK has consulted on facilities and on diversifying income sources, and it has collaborated on curriculum and program development, faculty exchanges and professional training for faculty and staff across Indonesia.

Faculty members Mike Reed from the College of Agriculture and Beth Goldstein from the College of Education have led the way in UK’s grant-funded Indonesia work in recent years, and will serve as co-principal investigators on the current project. Their expertise has been recognized by both Chemonics International and the USAID partners in Indonesia, and along with Keiko Tanaka, director of UK’s Asia Center (who also leads a current Indonesia-focused grant), they will serve as expert advisers to the UK team.

"All in all, the rapid change in Indonesia higher education has great potential impact for the U.S.," Carvalho said. "And the University of Kentucky will be at the leading edge of those changes."

MEDIA CONTACT: Sarah Geegan, (859) 257-5365; sarah.geegan@uky.edu