Hi, all. Do you remember scene of 3 Idiots when Rancho told Pia that her father was not running a college, but a factory, where donkeys were manufactured every year? He gave example of Suhas, Pia’s fiancee, who graduated as engineer and master in the same field, but ended up working in bank in US. If he was supposed to work in bank, why should he study in engineering then? In Indonesia, we know an agriculture institute that is wellknown as ‘very flexible’, as its graduates can work everywhere, from the agriculture field itself, education field, even work in bank (just like Suhas :D). Even for graduates who work in ‘match’ field to their educational background, we can see most of them work without passion to invent or create new ideas regarding their field. They have made their college proud and gain better rank by graduating on time with flying colors, getting recruited by multinational company and having good salary, but they are not different with coolies. Are those -coolies with tie- really our graduates’ quality we should be proud of?
It has been major concern nowadays that ranking system and accreditation standard -that emphasize on length of study, length of thesis writing time, GPA, and waiting time until first job obtained- are not the only parameter to measure the success of learning process in college. The most important is whether the graduates are able to answer public needs as higher education graduates are supposed to be public problem solver.
Tracer Study, an Answer?
Here are a bit what I got from National Workshop on Tracer Study last month. The competency of university graduates is experiencing a shift towards a greater awareness on the importance of generic and managerial competencies, besides specific and technical competencies. Tracer study is developed to answer the change in industry and corporate world by integrating the higher education institution with labor market.
According to Harald Schomburg, tracer study is defined as study to trace graduates of higher education institute. “Graduate Surveys”, “Alumni Researches”, “Graduate career tracking” or “Follow-up Study” are other term for it. Instead of just evaluating length of study, length of thesis writing time, GPA, and waiting time until first job obtained, this study assess the availability and quality of graduates. It traces in what field the graduates work -match/mismatch, graduates first income -one of indicator of graduates quality, and the most important: stakeholder perception about the graduates. It also traces what competencies graduates use most in their workforce so it can provide information for evaluation of higher education (curriculum improvement, for instance). We can say that keyword of the result of this study is “benchmarking according the needs of the universities – not rankings”
Things to Ponder…
Tracer study was perceived as useful to improve the learning process, gauge the market (satisfaction, demand), and building alumni network. It’s good that we can improve curriculum based on input from graduates (what competencies they feel useful in their workforce and what they need yet not taught in college) and stakeholder. The problem is when we rely only on this market labor to decide what people need. Note that market labor is created by industry, and industry policies are decided by capitalist power so it’s not always the same with what people really need. As illustration, a participant of the workshop next to me told me that lack of competence in English are really horrible among graduates of Medical Faculty from her university. Wait, whose opinion was that? If we see university, multinational pharmacy company, or insurance company as stakeholder, then may be yes, she is right about English as the competence needed most among medical doctor graduated. But we have thousands of doctors needed in rural area all over Indonesia, are they (Public Health Center) not included as stakeholder to participate in the tracer study? I bet they will agree to say that clinical and community leader skills are more important competence to teach in faculty.
Alumni database is including the availability and quality. It’s always good to know where the graduates located and work. I thought this kind of graduates mapping must be in government’s hand. It will be very bad if the government getting blind about the mapping of experts we need and experts we have. See the illustration I told about graduates of agricultural institute who -mostly, work mismatch with their education. Will it be consideration to delete the study program from the institute as no market needs expert from this field? No, many study program in this institute are needed to support national autonomy, it’s just that market don’t see them as profitable (of course). Relying on market to know what people needs will be misleading then…
Last thing to ponder here is about funding. Government of Indonesia has engaged the World Bank to support such efforts by the name of improving quality of education and health care. When there’s any program held by the government ‘supported’ by World Bank, we will see many policies to implement behind that, which could be bad for the supported country. Wish this is not only paranoid eyes of mine 🙂
drPhi 