Indonesia Education Ministry Fund for Doctoral Scholarships and Research

posted Sep 25, 2012, 10:59 AM by Brook Ross [ updated Sep 25, 2012, 8:25 PM by Unknown user ]

Starting next year, the ministry will grant 4,000 doctoral scholarships, a quarter of which will be for courses at overseas universities. Musliar Kasim, the deputy education minister, previously said the number of people with any kind of doctoral degree in Indonesia was low at just 23,000 out of a population of 240 million.

Indonesia's National Education Development Fund (DPPN), was created in 2010 using funds left over from the Education Ministry’s budget from the previous year. The initial amount was Rp 1 trillion. In 2011, it swelled to Rp 3.6 trillion, and this year stands at Rp 10.6 trillion. At the start of 2013, it is expected to increase by another Rp 5 trillion. The current size of the endowment was revealed by Education Minister Muhammad Nuh at a hearing before the House of Representatives last Friday.

The fund may only be used for providing postgraduate scholarships to primary and secondary school teachers, rebuilding schools in areas hit by natural disasters, and funding research on a national scale. However, Nuh said that only the interest generated by the fund, and not the principal, could be used. He said the interest currently stood at around Rp 300 billion. The minister said that with the usable amount set to increase as more money was pumped into the fund, he hoped to be able to grant more scholarships, especially for doctorate degrees, to improve teacher quality.

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