SUPERFICIAL STRATEGY?
The Indonesian government reversed a plan to raise education at state colleges that was proposed in January next month. Following protest from individuals across the nation, education minister Nadiem Anwar Makarim announced that charges would not be raised for the upcoming 2024 to 2025 educational time.
According to guidelines at public colleges, fees may be set based on a federal standard and tested to ensure students from the least-affluent families receive the lowest tuition rates.
The same rules do not apply to private corporations, according to Angga, which means there is a higher challenge of passage for financially needy students.
” A lot of us academics see]influencer scholarships ] as a shallow or superficial strategy by private institutions to attract kids because, in Indonesia, private universities struggle to get candidates and most kids want to attend state institutions, which are considered more prestigious and are often more affordable”.
According to Angga, the influence scholarships may also serve as a “free advertising” tool to increase the visibility of these private schools.
These learners who have a large social media following can tell good things about the school they are enrolling in, he said, and they can promote their followers to do the same.
However, Angga cautioned that students who are interested in selling or who see being an influence as a” part gig” could use these scholarships to further their educational goals.
Last year, teenage influencer Satria Rizki Safiri, who has more than 200, 000 followers on TikTok, received a scholarship worth 66 million Indonesian rupiah ( US$ 4, 000 ) from Telkom Purwokerto Institute of Technology in Purwokerto, Central Java, to study logistics engineering.
” I think on one hand, it shows these individuals have creativity and confidence. But trust is not always the same as ability, especially if these individuals are accepted into dynamic levels”, Angga said.
” Perhaps these institutions should prioritize awarding scholarships to students who are economically poor or have low-income background, because those kids are the ones who may really need it,” he said.
This content was the first to appear on SCMP.