Several weeks ago, Indonesia’s Minister of Education, Nadiem Makarim, suggested that Indonesian students who are studying abroad should return to the country once they graduate. He said the country is in need of young talent.
Makarim was a Harvard graduate. He returned to Indonesia to start Go-Jek, a ride-hailing app, which received funding from big companies like Google. It later became the first decacorn (a startup that’s worth more than $10 million) in the country.
The Coordinating Minister of Maritime Affairs and Investment, Luhut Pandjaitan, expressed the same sentiment back in February this year. He invited some Indonesian scientists who are working abroad for a dinner in Jakarta.
Makarim is perhaps one of a few lucky talents who can be successful in Indonesia. Most of our brainiacs have left to work abroad for better opportunities. It is not uncommon for these geniuses to be offered a job after they graduate. And I wouldn’t blame them for accepting a great offer.
But a great offer is only one of many reasons talented Indonesians leave the country. There are several others, including that people with highly specialized skills find it hard to find a job that suits their expertise in the country.
I once met a woman who worked as a lecturer in a state university. She’s teaching general chemistry while her expertise is water filtration. Many people think it’s the same, but it would be like asking an internet security expert to teach kids how to type in Microsoft Word. She felt intellectually unfulfilled, though she would brush off the feelings by saying she did it because she was patriotic. Back in the day, she rejected some offers from abroad because her husband’s business is based in Indonesia and he wouldn’t want to live elsewhere.
The late B.J. Habibie was a famous example of the kind of genius whose skills we wasted. He built an aircraft but the government refused to produce it on an industrial scale because they had doubts about its quality. He later chose to pursue his career in Germany, where his work was more appreciated.
Indonesians who want to master a specified field of study will have to finally leave the country if they want to stay true to their expertise. It can be because those skills are not in demand. As our technology slowly develops, we may not need those skills just yet. In some cases, we need those skills but we’d rather pay a lower price for a more generalized service. Specialty can be seen as a limited skill, here, unfortunately. People tend to favor generalists more, and look down on specialists.
Another reason Indonesia loses some of its smartest citizens is belittlement and rejection. I mentioned how Habibie’s plane was rejected because of a supposedly quality issue. A similar thing happened to Ricky Nelson, who built Indonesia’s first electric car in 2013.
Nelson had been working for 14 years in Japan when the then Minister for State-owned Enterprises, Dahlan Iskan, persuaded him to return to the country to build an electric car. Iskan wanted Indonesia to have its own electric car brand before foreign brands entered the national market.
Nelson had a great job and dozens of patents under his belt at the time. Returning to Indonesia sounded like a bad idea. However, after some fierce persuasion from Iskan, he decided to return to the country to build the car (with Iskan’s funding). Months later, officials announced the car didn’t pass the “emission test” so it was not suitable for mass production. There’s a controversy around the test as experts thought it wasn’t necessary. An electric car doesn’t produce direct emissions, so if the car was expected to emit some gas during a test, that would not happen. That’s the whole point of an electric car: it doesn’t produce gas. But the officials had said it; it didn’t pass the test, so the project stopped.
Nelson was later in talks with a Malaysian investor who showed some interest in his car. Indonesia’s officials said that they weren’t worried about the prospect of other countries taking over the project. They thought that nobody would want to buy the car here anyway. Ouch.
It wasn’t clear how the talks with the Malaysian investor turned out. Nelson apparently headed back to Japan sometime later. He seemed to be disappointed with how things had turned out back home, but what did he expect from a country that looks down on its own talent? He’s well respected in Japan.
The third reason we lose talented people from Indonesia lies in our school system. In Indonesia, grade acceleration is not a very common practice. Most of the time, children cannot skip a grade, even if their current grade level is too easy for them. They have to wait and finish the study along with other friends. Many people think it’s better for kids’ development, but a study shows grade acceleration doesn’t affect kids’ social and emotional development. Gifted kids enjoy being challenged and putting them in a curriculum that’s too easy will certainly kill their motivation.
It’s also a waste of time. Education must cater to the needs of the kids but it doesn’t mean they should be held back from fulfilling their potential. Letting the smart kids level up means the school is appreciating their talents.
It takes effort to persuade talented people to stay in the country. By allowing these geniuses enough room to grow, they may stay to build the nation. A good start would be to revamp the school system, then put a lot of attention on budding talent. The country should stop “harvesting” talent that have worked abroad, and focus more on taking care of the seedlings on its own land. It should stop picking a talent who is on their peak of career and then make them perform a certain “duty”. Many of Indonesia’s ministers were appointed in this way, unfortunately. Makarim is an example.
Another way to prevent fleeing talents is to pay them properly. Sometimes, a company expects our best talent to accept “a local salary” while at the same time, they will pay foreigners of the same skillsets with a much higher price. It is as discriminatory as it is demeaning.
Last but not least, I think we have to be logical about this. Some talented people should be just let go to find their own place in the world, especially when the country can’t provide suitable jobs for them. We can’t expect them to wait until we can provide the tools or technology that suit the needs of people with their skillsets. When we let go of them, they’ll have a better chance to grow and contribute in a greater way to science and the world. A ship is not built to be forever tied to a mooring at a bay.
Image credit: felixioncool