by Hans Antlov and Siti Ruhanawati
On 14-15 March, KSI partner Pusat Pengkajian Islam dan Masyarakat – Universitas Islam Negeri Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta (PPIM-UIN) organized a workshop on barriers for quality research among Islamic State universities. The seminar was opened by the head of research, publication and community service in the Directorate General for Islamic Education at the Ministry of Religious Affairs, Muhammad Zain and Prof. Jamhari Makruf, chair of the advisory board of PPIM-UIN. Former Vice-Chancellors of UIN Jakarta, Prof. Azyumardi Azra and Prof. Kommarudin Hidayat also provided introductory comments. Other speakers included Dr. Hans Antlov from KSI and Dr. Inaya Rakhmani from the University of Indonesia who presented her study of barriers for excellence at state universities.
Participants came from around 30 state Islamic universities in Indonesia, from Aceh to Sulawesi. Out of Indonesia’s 3.200 institutes of higher education, 325 are Islamic (state and private universities), regulated by the Ministry of Religious Affairs. The remaining are under the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education (Kemenristekdikti). To date, KSI has mainly engaged with Kemenristekdikti, and this was an opportunity to learn more about the specific challenges of Islamic universities.
At the workshop, a diagnostic study on this topic by PPIM-UIN was presented. Recommendations from the study and the workshop include: the leaderships of university need to map out the resources and to develop facility to support research, review lecturer’s credit system (KUM) for better research performance, development of support system for the quality research (including capacity and mentoring, international networks, and scientific community) and encourage a better research culture. The seminar will be followed-up with technical meetings between Kemenristekdikti and the Ministry of Religious Affairs on how to improve the quality of research.
