Beberapa hari ini saya
mencoba mencerna artikel pendek yang ditulis Jim Clifton berjudul Universities: Disruption is Coming. Saya membaca itu karena dipincu oleh film
pendek berjudul Change-2 oleh Gerd Leonhard.
Film itu pertama kali saya lihat dari paparan Pak Nuh, yang kemudian
saya cari di internet. Saya lebih
bersemangat merenungi makna artikel Clifton dan film Leonhard, ketika membaca
tulisan Sudaryono di Kompas 29 Agustus 2017 yang dikirim oleh Pak Rusijono
lewat WAG Senat Unesa.
Dengan ilustrasi bahwa
Google dan Ernst & Young merekrut karyawan tanpa memperhatikan ijasah
(universitas) dan diyakini akan diikuti oleh perusahaan lain, Jim Clifton
menyatakan sedang terjadi guncangan (disruption) terhadap universitas yang selama
ini dianggap atau menganggap diri sebagai lembaga yang mapan. Sementara itu film Change-2 meyakinkan
pemirsa bahwa teknologi digital telah merambah ke segala aspek kehidupan. Ketika segala sesuatu telah connected, semua telah equal, dan semua kinerja telah perfect, maka tinggal satu peluang untuk
modal inovasi yaitu manusia. Pada
saatnya semua hal yang sudah disistematisasi akan dikerjakan oleh mesin,
sehingga tugas manusia adalah bagian yang tidak dapat disismatisasi yaitu
kreativitas, imajinasi, inovasi dan sejenis dengan itu. Dan itu yang selama ini kurang mendapat
perhatian di dunia pendidikan, termasuk universitas.
Sebenarnya apa yang
diungkapkan oleh Clifton bukan sesuatu yang baru. Walaupun tidak melalui penelitian yang
serius, saya sudah menengarai itu sejak 5 tahun lalu dan saya sampaikan dalam
berbagai forum. Biasanya saya
menggunakan contoh fenomena iklan di koran pada hari Sabtu. Biasanya banyak iklan dari perusahaan yang
mencari karyawan baru. Sementara ketika
ada job fair, ribuan pemuda yang
umumnya lulusan unversitas antre mencari kerja.
Sepertinya ada yang tidak klop.
Perusahaan sulit mendapatkan karyawan baru yang diinginkan, sementara
lulusan universitas kesulitan mencari pekerjaan. Tony Wagner dalam bukunya The Global
Achievement Gap juga menunjukkan fenomena yang sama di Amerika Serikat. Jadi “ketidak-klopan” antara yang dihasilkan
oleh universitas dan apa yang diperlukan dunia kerja, tidak hanya terjadi di
Indonesia tetapi juga di Amerika Serikat.
Saya pernah memaparkan fenomena itu pada ASAIHL Intenational Conference
di Singapore tanggal 3-4 Desember 2014 (saya cantumkan di bawah).
Jika ditelusur lebih
jauh, sebenarnya gejala seperti itu sudah cukup lama terjadi. Perusahaan yang bergerak di bidang komputer
lebih percaya sertifikat Cisco dibanding ijasah S1 Teknik Informatika. Perusahaan konstruktsi lebih percaya
sertifikat welding dibanding ijasah diploma Teknik Pengelasan. Bahkan sertifikat TOEFL seringkali lebih
dipercaya dibanding ijasah S1 atau diploma prodi bahasa Inggris. Untuk
melanjutkan ke S3 bidang Teknik di Amerika Serikat dipersyaratkan sertifikat
GMAT dg sekor tertentu. Sepertinya pihak
industri lebih cocok dengan standar yang digunakan oleh lembaga sertifikasi
dibanding yang digunakan oleh universitas.
Jika pada saatnya ada sertifikat itu merambah ke bidang lain, bukan
mustahil ijasah kita turun atau bahkan hilang nilainya.
Ketidakpercayaan
Google terhadap ijasah universitas itulah yang mungkin mendorongnya membiayai
the Economist Intelligence Unit (bagian dari Majalah the Enonomist) untuk
melakukan kajian tentang kompetensi apa yang diperlukan oleh dunia kerja. Hasil studi itu diterbitkan dengan judul Driving Skills Agenda: Preparing Students
fof the Future. Laporan itu
menyatakan lima kompetensi terpenting di masa depan adalah: problem solving,
team working, communication, critical thiking dan creativity. Bukankah ini sangat mirip denan apa yang
disebutkan dalam film pendek Change-2?
Mengapa terjadi
“persimpangan” seperti itu? Seperti
dalam film Change-2 disebutkan pola kerja di industri mengarah pada digitalization, mobilization, augmetation,
disintermediation dan automation. Oleh karena itu dunia industri memerlukan
karyawan yang punya kemampuan yang jauh berbeda dengan masa lalu. Sementara itu, sekolah dan universitas tetap
asyik dengan pendidikan lama yang lebih menekankan kemampuan berpikir
linier. Kemampuan teknis seperti itu
tetap perlu, tetapi tidak lagi cukup di era digital.
Ketika buku sederhana
saya dengan judul “Semua Dihandle Google, Tugas Sekolah Apa?” terbit pada
Desember lalu, saya mendapat pertanyaan yany sulit dijawab. Apakah memang ke depan, sekolah dan
universitas tidak diperlukan lagi, karena semua sudah digitalized dan ditangani oleh Google? Sulit menjawabnya. Namun, seperti ungkapan Jim Clifton, sebagai
penghasil tenaga kerja terdidik, universitas sudah mulai tidak dipercayai dan
bahkan ditinggalkan pelanggannya yaitu dunia industri. Seperti dimuat di fil
Change-2, tetap ada yang tidak dapat ditangani oleh mesin (robot), yaitu yang
terkait dengan imajinasi, kreativitas, inovasi dan sejenisnya. Jadi sekolah/universitas tetap perlu, namun
harus dilakukan perubahan fundamental.
Arah sekolah/universitas tidak boleh hanya mengembangkan kemampuan
berpikir linier, yang sangat mungkin pada saatnya diambil oleh mesin. Yang justru lebih penting adalah kemampuan
kreatif yang tidak liner. Sudah saatnya
universitas bangun dari mimpi indah menikmati kemapanan semu.
Bahan pelengkap.
RETHINKING EDUCATION FOR 21ST
CENTURY:
An Indonesian
Case
By
MuchlasSamani
msamani@unesa.ac.id
Paper presented on ASAIHL International
Conference in Singapore, December 3-4, 2014
There are two paradox in Indonesian education recently, firstly is the
paradox of job offer and vacancy. Thousands of high school/diploma 3 and
university graduates struggle to seek for jobs during market job fair, on the
other hands, Saturday’s papers keep on advertising a lot of job vacancies from
many companies. There are many educated young people who find difficulty in
finding jobs; on the contrary there are many companies which find difficulty in
finding qualified employees.
The second paradox is the fact that many successful people in their
career turn out not to be the students who always got high grades at their
former education. And there are many people who had high scores at their former
education are not the successful people in the career later. It seems there is
no significant relation between what they learn at schools and their success in
their careers.
Series of observations and interviews found out that to be successful,
someone should have hard skills, like being intelligent and creative, and mastering
his/her field. Also soft skills, like being hard worker, information seeker, risk
taker, problem solver, always learning new things, having lots of friends and
partners in collaboration, and having a concern for others.
The above paradox may illustrate that Indonesian education so far is not
comprehensive as it emphasizes on hard skills and neglects the soft skills. It
is high time to rethink the Indonesian education.
Keywords:
education, paradox, hard skills, soft skills.
Introduction
When there was a job
fair in Surabaya, thousands of job seekers come hoping to get a job there (www.jppn.com. Accessed 14 August 2013). Similar situation happened
every time there was a job fair in other big cities in Indonesia. This is an indicator
that many Indonesian youth are looking for work in Indonesia. This is also
supported by the results of tracer studies conducted by several universities (Samani,
2011). Inequality number of job seekers compared with job vacancies offered at
job fairs showed how difficult young people get a job.
Interviews with job
seekers illustrated how difficult it was to find a job, even though they were
graduates of leading colleges (Samani, 2012). The data also showed that those
who found difficulty to find jobs were not only college graduates, but also
vocational graduates, although the school is designed to make the graduates
ready to enter the work (Saifuddin, 2014). Tracers study on vocational schools
showed a mismatch between the work and the majors’ background (Samani,
2011). It showed the difficulty of
vocational graduates to get jobs.
With the large
numbers of applicants, does it mean industries would be very easy to get
employees in accordance with the standards? Are not there so many applicants,
so they just choose the best among them? Apparently this is not the case. Every
Saturday, Indonesian newspapers contain lots of advertisements from companies
seeking new employees. The number of these ads shows that it is not easy for
the industries to look for employees who have the desired qualifications. PT
PAMA’s (a leading company in Indonesia) experience showed, if there were 100 applicants,
those who passed the psychology selection were a maximum of only 25 people, and
then those who passed in interview test were only a maximum of 5 people. The figures
were the most optimistic at the level of mechanical and operators. The higher the
job level the more difficult it gets (Subekti, 2014).
Competence Discrepancy between the Schools of the World
of Work
Why does it happen?
Apparently there is a discrepancy competencies learned in school and university
with the world of work desired competencies. Need assessment done with the
industries found that the desired world of work competencies are: (1) master his/her
expertise, (2) capable of reasoning well, (3) has a good working attitude,
among other things: honest, disciplined, hard working and responsible, (4)
problem solver, (5) able to communicate well, (6) and able to collaborate with
others (Samani, 2010).
Mastering his/her expertise
and ability to reason properly referred to as the hard skills, while others
called soft skills. Industries consider soft skills are very important. Vocational
skills can be quickly trained, but forming a working attitude is difficult
(Kamilan, 2014). This phenomenon is in line with the reports of Chapman &
Hammond (2013) that the industries require employees who have good soft skills;
so that they are immediately ready to work. That is why most of the ads look
for employees who have work experience. Those who already have work experience
are expected to have sufficient soft skills, so industries do not need to train
them more (Samani, 2012).
Are only employees
who require soft skills? It is apparently not so. A series of depth interviews
with school principals, teachers, graduate students, corporate managers, was
conducted to collect information about: (1) whether their friends while
studying at the previous school/college who always got high marks and was
praised by the teacher/lecturer, are now the most successful compared to other
friends, (2) their friends who are now (as an adult and work) the most
successful in the work: how their scores when they were at school/college and
what kind of activities they had at school and outside school/college. (3) That they are successful
now, what seems to be the key to their success.
It turns out that
those who always got top marks when they were at school/college are not always
the most successful people when they are adults and work. Those who are now the
most successful in work and society, most of them got ordinary marks when they
were at schools/college, but they were active in social activities both within
the school/college and in the community.Even many of them worked while they
were students of the school/college (Samani, 2012).
Why they are very
successful in their career and daily life?
It is found that the key to their success is much more influenced by the
provision of soft skills, such
as hard worker, problem solver, creative, resilient, capable to communicate and
collaborate well, and risk taker (Samani, 2012). These factors were also confirmed by FGD
results carried out by PhD students at State University of Surabaya.
The importance of soft skills appears to increase in the
21st century. Dalin and Rust (1996), Rich
(2001), Wagner (2008), Trilling and Fadel (2009) are some of the expert, with
different terms, who remind the importance of soft skills for the 21st
century. Even Wagner (2008) questions
"why even our best schools do not teach the new survival skills our
children need ". Handy (1997) criticizes “I believe we need a totally new
kind of schooling which not about learning knowledge and fact, but to help the
student to know what to do with all this knowledge and how to do it”. In the
era of technology, work method changes very quickly. What workers need is capability and curiosity
to learn new technology related to his/her jobs. High order thinking is needed to response new
work method with advance technology. Problem solving is everyday task faced by
most workers now. Most of task in
industries are carried out in the form of collaboration, so capability in
communication and collaboration are very important.
What we need to handle that kind of work situation? Dallin
and Rust offer what they call life skills, Wagner offer what he call the
survival skills, Trilling and Fadel offer what they call 21st
century skills and Rich offer what she call mega skills. The skills offered by those expert are very
similar and most of them can be categorized as soft skills. They show a huge
evidence and arguments why the skills offered are very important in the era of
technology.
We get two paradox, here.
First, between the difficulty of job seekers to find job and the
difficulty of industries to find good new employees. Second, the people who got good mark in
school/college but do not success in their career, while the successful people
got ordinary marks during in schools/college.
It seems that from their school/college, the graduates do not get the
key competencies needed to get a good job and to be successful.
Where those successful people managed to develop the soft
skills? Depth interviews with some successful people concluded that they
acquired the soft skills from their experience in the organization's activities
and from working while going to school/college. The obligation to manage their
time made them develop self-management and always looked for opportunities.
Interaction with colleagues with different backgrounds made them developed the
ability to communicate and cooperate. Their enjoyment to handle task in his/her
organization and the requirement to do school/college task, made them get used
to working hard and never giving up. Participation in the organization was also
an excellent vehicle to build networks and take risks (Samani, 2014).
Formal education praxis in Indonesia has not put soft
skills as an important part of education. Theoretically soft skills has been
known long before. One of the fathers of Indonesian Education, Ki
HajarDewantara (2004) has already mentioned the importance of the character or budi pekerti in education. Law on National Educational System also states
clearly that the purpose of education is to develop students to become
religious, healthy, scientific, creative, and independent human being, having
good character and becoming good citizen. Curriculum in Indonesia also mentions the
importance of three domains of education, namely cognitive, affective and psychomotor.
Unfortunately the character and the affective domain as
the basic of soft skills are only relied on a nurturant effect and not a
deliberate educational purpose. Therefore there is no part on the lesson plan
how to achieve it. Also there is no specific
measurement tools how to check the achievement either. It makes character and
affective domain are neglected during teaching and learning process. So it can be understood that successful
people acquire soft skills not from schools/lectures, but from work and
participation in community organizations.
Indonesian government and educators have to consider the
education praxis in schools and colleges.
The phenomena described above shows that the education praxis in schools
teaches the mismatch competencies from the real world needs. They focused only on hard skills and
neglected soft skills needed by world of work.
It makes the graduates get difficulty to get job and makes them to learn
soft skills from another activities.
From industries’ point of view, this means high cost. Industries need a big budget to give a long job
training or even retraining for the new employees. That is why industries
prefer to get new employees who have work experience, so they don’t need such
training. It also cuts down time needed
in managing the new employees. From graduates’
point of view, they are at loss because most competencies they acquired at
school are not those needed by world of work. From government’ point of view that is money
wasting, because it funds a mismatch education.
We have to rethink our education and soft skills should have greater
attention.
I don’t say that we do not need hard skills to be
successful, we do need it. People will
get difficulty to get job when he/she does not have any hard skills. People will not get success when he/she does
not have higher thinking skills. But we
need soft skills as well. People will
not success when he/she does not have good capability to communicate and
collaborate with other people. He/she
needs to work hard, to work creatively and to responsible to his/her task.
Recommendation
Education has to pay attention to both skills and put
them into teaching learning objectives.
Teacher has to elaborate the two sides of teaching learning objectives
in his/her lesson plan and measure them in his/her students achievements. School principal has to develop school
culture that boost students’ soft skill development. Student achievement report
must contain soft skills as well as hard skills, so that the teacher pay an
equal attention to both aspects.
Do we need new subjects for soft skills domain? I don’t
think so. Soft skills competencies
should be deliberately developed and measured the results in the process of
education. But it is not necessarily in the form of soft skills subjects. Soft
skills and hard skills are both necessary and should be united as life skills
developed and integrated in the learning process (Samani, 2010). Hard skills
can be learned as the content and soft skills are developed within the content.
As an example, in
history class, students can learn how to work hard, collaborate with their
friends and solving problems through learning history. The history teacher should insert the spirit
of work hard and collaboration in his lesson plan, develop and practice them in
the history class. Both the history and these skills are integrated and
measured. Another example is during an extracurricular activities, soft skills
might be developed, but it should be planned and measured well
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