(400)HIGHER EDUCATION AFFIRMATIVE PROGRAM FOR CITIZENS FROM EASTERN PART OF INDONESIA: PROSPECT AND CHALLENGES

摘要

Indonesia is an archipelago with diverse ethnics, cultures and basic educational advancement whichcreate discrepancy in the sophomore year of university students. It is generally believed that peopleliving in the eastern part of Indonesia lacks behind their counterparts from central and western part ofIndonesia in the sense of access to information and the standard of basic education due to insufficientinfra-structure and geographical outreach. For this reason, the graduates of senior high school seldomto pass the national university entrance examination and hence it becomes the chronic gap of humanresource development in the eastern part of Indonesia.Bearing in mind that such a development is essential to equalize wellbeing throughout the country, aprogram called higher education affirmative education has been implemented in the last four yearsthat enables approximately 2000 senior high school graduates of eastern part of Indonesia have beenadmitted to enroll in the 39 selected state universities throughout Indonesia on the basis of specialcriteria of selection. Those who are accepted receive a full scholarship covering the tuition fee andliving allowance.Nonetheless, only less than 5 % continue to proceed for under-graduate program (sarjana program)due to failure to meet the minimum GPA at the sophomore year. Most of them have been transferredto diploma program.This paper discusses the prospect and challenges of the current program from the perspective ofchronic causes of the failure and the likely solution offers.