Indonesian International Student Mobility Awards Program: Chances and Challenges

Abstract

The Indonesian international student mobility awards is a Ministry of Education program designed for students to take part in a one-semester academic mobility program at leading universities and industries abroad. Apart from that, this program aims to develop students' abilities to be independent, think critically, communicate, teamwork, as well as provide experience of living and studying abroad. As a program that has just been implemented, of course there are many challenges faced by the government and universities as organizers and students as individuals chosen to run the program. Apart from the many challenges, of course there are also many opportunities for governments, universities and students to improve networks at a global level. This research aims to analyze the challenges and opportunities of the Indonesian international student mobility awards program after being implemented for four years. This research used a qualitative method with a multi-case study type, data sources were taken from twelve informants through individual and group interviews consisting of university leaders, heads of international affairs offices, students who had participated in the program and supervisors selected using a porpusive sampling technique. To strengthen the interview findings, the author also took data from expert opinions, highly reputable journals related to this research in the same context and issue. All data were analyzed using the Miles and Huberman interactive analysis technique. The research findings show four crucial challenges and four opportunities for the future. If the challenges can be overcome well, and opportunities are achieved optimally, then the opportunity for a golden Indonesia in 2045 will be achieved brilliantly. All of these findings will be discussed in depth and holistically in the results and discussion sections.