On what was once a palm oil plantation outside Bogor, Indonesia’s government is planting the seeds of a new institution designed to nurture the next generation of leaders.
But President Prabowo Subianto’s ambitions for the University of the Republic of Indonesia (URI) do not stop at statecraft – officials have also billed it as the answer to the Southeast Asian nation’s shortage of technological talent.
“We have such abundant natural resources, but to this day we are technologically behind,” Aris Marsudiyanto, head of the cabinet-level Agency for Development Control and Special Investigation, said on July 23.
Whether a single state-backed institution can train all the scientists, engineers, doctors, civil servants and future presidents required is unclear, however.
Questions have also been raised about how many resources will be diverted from existing campuses to support the URI’s development.