Veteran reformer appointed Indonesian higher education minister

Indonesia has carved up its education ministry and enlisted the ultimate insider to oversee tertiary education and science, in a possible change of direction under new president Prabowo Subianto.

Satryo Soemantri Brodjonegoro, who chaired the Indonesian Academy of Sciences from 2018 to 2023 and was director general of higher education between 1999 and 2007, was sworn in as minister of higher education, science and technology in Jakarta on 21 October.

He is the brother of Bambang Brodjonegoro, minister for research and technology until that portfolio was merged with the education ministry in 2021. Now Mr Prabowo has reversed the union, splitting the super-ministry into three separate entities.

University of Tasmania Asia specialist James Chin said the split would relieve the new minister of primary and secondary education, Abdul Mu’ti, of distractions. “The biggest problem in Indonesia…is primary and secondary schools,” Professor Chin said. “Some schools in the outer islands are really in bad shape.”

One of Mr Prabowo’s major election promises was to introduce a free school meals programme, an enormous undertaking in an archipelago of more than 13,000 islands with vastly different levels of development. The government has allocated 71 trillion rupiah (£3.5 billion) to the scheme next year, but there are estimates that it could require more than six times as much funding.

Sharyn Davies, director of the Herb Feith Indonesia Engagement Centre at Monash University, said the splitting of the ministries could also usher a push towards academic excellence and a drive to boost Indonesian universities’ global rankings.

As director general, Professor Brodjonegoro was credited with initiating Indonesia’s World Class University programme to boost the sector’s global competitiveness. Earlier, as chair of the mechanical engineering department at Bandung Institute of Technology, he introduced a self-evaluation process that was subsequently adopted by the institution and the higher education bureaucracy.

The Antara news agency reported that he was expected to have a “strategic role” in realising Mr Prabowo’s vision of industrial development through technological innovation and the generation of more “adaptive” graduates.

An overseas-trained engineer – like his father Soemantri Brodjonegoro, who went on to be rector of the University of Indonesia and minister of education and culture – Professor Brodjonegoro has a very different background from outgoing education and culture minister Nadiem Makarim, founder of ride-sharing unicorn company Gojek.

Dr Davies said Mr Nadiem had emphasised practical skills and entrepreneurship. “Brodjonegoro could prioritise intellectual rigour [and] recalibrate the curriculum to focus more on discipline-based knowledge and critical thinking suited to traditional professions.”

But she said this was reasonably unlikely, with “much of the world” moving away from disciplines such as history and philosophy. “Probably…a balanced approach will emerge, integrating both academic excellence and practical skills to address Indonesia’s evolving educational needs.”

Graduate quality is also likely to be a focus for the new minister given his “awareness of the gap between educational outcomes and market expectations”, Dr Davies said. “As minister, he may push for reforms aimed at raising the quality of graduates, possibly through enhanced accreditation processes, stricter performance evaluations and alignment between curriculum and professional demands.”

She said the Dutch-born and US-educated Professor Brodjonegoro could also push to open Indonesia’s university sector to more international academics and institutions. “All the top 50 universities in the world have really diverse academic bodies…but Indonesia [is] still quite insular in that respect.”

Professor Chin said the new administration was likely to double down on rules allowing branch campuses to be established only by top-200 global universities. But he said the policy direction was hard to interpret, and Cabinet changes were likely in another six months.

“Indonesia is one of those countries. It’s just so big and…so diverse, it’s really difficult to govern.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com