World Class University

A New Stage for  Maulana Malik Ibrahim State Islamic University, Malang 

in Internasional Community

Recently, the World Class University discourse is getting rise rapidly among college communities throughout Indonesia. The term of World Class University (WCU) was firstly introduced by UNESCO through the World Declaration on Higher Education for the Twenty-first Century: Vision and Action, Paris 1998. It was motivated by the urgency of the universities' role to prepare the nation's competitiveness in globalization era.

As we know that nowadays and in the future, the development of higher educations (read universities) can not be separated from the prediction of the sciences’ development including social science, humanities, technology, art, culture and economy as well. The shift of economy paradigm - from which based on natural resources and cheap labor and moved to  the nation's ability to develop creativity and innovation in the use of science, technology, and art - leads the nations to reformulate their strategies to strenghten their existence and competitiveness in the international community. One of those strategies is to involve the higher educations to contribute their roles for the nation. It is believed that the participation of higher educations toward nation’s competitiveness becomes a solution for  nation’s existence in globalization era. By having more than 1000 higher educations spread all over Indonesia, it is a huge potential for Indonesia to take a part more in the international community.

The nation's competitiveness can be achieved only if there is a strong unity and foundation as well as nation’s support for all aspects regarding to this issue. Therefore, universities can take the role that very significantly to unify the nation by organizing qualified education, providing more opportunities for the entire of nation’s stakeholders, and conducting researches which are able to explore the potentials of  local and other broader communities. Indeed, universities are required to work hard and more in order to restore the dignity of nation in the international community.

Responding the challenge above, UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang – well known as UIN Maliki Malang – like or dislike must take a part in preparing nation’s competitiveness. Supported by some good facilities and excelent academic atmosphere as well as high qualified human resources, UIN Maliki is ready to be a World Class University (WCU), a new stage to contribute more actions for the nation.

Taking a note from the university leaders, UIN Maliki Malang has prepared some supporting pillars to realize the dream to be WCU as soon as possible. Those pillars are embodied in a comprehensive long-term planning covering resources fulfillment, a good management and governance, and academic development. Resource planning will concern on human resources (HR), budgeting, and infrastructure. Meanwhile, management and governance will be associated with accountability, quality management, and efficient governance. In addition, the academic development will be related to research development, teaching and learning process, communities service as well as having some mutual international cooperations.

HR planning is related to lecturers and academic staff . Ideally , the ratio of the number of lecturers and students must be between 1:10-15 . It means that a lecturer must facilitate 10-15 students. While for academic staff, it is ranged from 1:10. An academic staff must serve 10 students. UIN Maliki for now is trying to meet that ideal ratio by recruiting new lecturers and staffs who have academic qualifications in accordance with the needs of the institution. It is expected that by having qualified and propotional number of lecturer and staff, an excellent student service will be realized. Furthermore, HR development should also be designed to have good competence, commitment, and heightened awareness to manage World Class University. It is continously done in line with lecturers and staffs’ specialization and duties, including the international language competence to increase the confidence associated with international community. A program that has been done by UIN Maliki Malang to support this is by holding IALF Bali as a partner to conduct English training to enhance lecturers and staffs’ English competence. The expected outcome of this training is that the lecturers are able to use English in their teaching and learning process and for the staffs are able to use English in their workplace daily.

Budget is the other important resources that should be developed in line with UIN Maliki Malang efforts to realize World Class University. It is very important to support some activities done in campus, such as: HR development (training), research, academic, facilities and other operational fundings. To objectify that, UIN Maliki Malang has coordinated and lobbied the government to increase the budget. Besides, UIN Maliki Malang has been trying to find other funding sources independently, for example: business center, cooperative, land rental and others. When the budget is sufficient, the realization of WCU is just a matter of time.

The adequacy of budget, off course, will give some significant impacts for UIN Maliki Malang, especially for its infrastructure development. The availability of good infrastucture to support the learning process is badly needed by UIN Maliki Malang; moreover, it is for realizing the WCU. New building for teaching and learning process, new dormitory for students, new laboratories, and library upgrading are the focus of UIN Maliki Malang nowadays. In addition, technology and information system that have been owned by UIN Maliki Malang so far should be enhanced to provide good management and services. By having those new infrastructures, it is expected that UIN Maliki Malang is really ready to welcome and manage WCU well.

Good management and efficient governance become the next focus of UIN Maliki Malang to prepare itself to WCU. It is very important when UIN Maliki Malang has declared being WCU, UIN Maliki must have good management to strenghten itself in broader community. Besides, concerning on effective and efficient governance will also help in managing WCU. To promote it, UIN Maliki Malang develop a reliable quality assurance system. This quality assurance system is developed to provide guarantee over the results that have been designed before as well as to improve the work performance. The recent result of good management that has been shown by UIN Maliki is the best achievement of Public Service Agency (BLU) and Accreditation A from National Accreditation Bureau for Higher Education. How UIN Maliki Malang can get those achievements if there is no good management and efficient governance that have seriously been applied by all stakeholders there. It proves that UIN Maliki management is serious and ready for WCU era.

Academic is the next point to be implemented in accordance with the standards of World Class University. Qualified academic activities which based on WCU standards will be achieved if  some supporting aspects such as various resources fulfilment, good quality management and efficient governance have been successfully carried out by the university. Further, academic development at UIN Maliki is designed to increase its teaching and learning process quality, research quality, and community service quality as the most important component of academic field.

To support this academic field, UIN Maliki Malang has designed a comprehensive curriculum which integrating Islamic values and advanced technology. This curriculum implementation is based on the education system of Pesantren (Islamic Boarding School) that emphasizes on learning how to live in society through Islamic values. As a religion, Islam has become a source of sciences. Therefore, the learning process should be able to find the connections between various scientific phenomena with the Islam main source; Al Qur'an and Hadith. In addition, the implementation of the learning process is done to inculcate various values of Ulul Albab (learning seriously, being able to distinguish between the right and wrong, having critical thinking, being able to share the knowledge to others, and putting fear only to Allah SWT). The learning process must be able to internalize these values, make these values as a belief for the students, then make these values as a basis for their behavior on their daily life. Through this integrated learning process, it distinguishes UIN Maliki Malang with other universities.

Besides, the curriculum is also adopted with some universities' curriculum that have succesfully shown the ability to have graduates who are able to participate in international community. The curriculum is designed to facilitate graduates with high-level thinking skills through reading and researching culture, therefore, it should be concerned with learning strategies that encourages students to produce works/performances that demonstrate the ability of high-level thinking. In addition, the learning process is also applied to develop a variety of important characters needed by the students to be able to work together with people of various cultures, religions, tribes, and nations. In line with this situation, UIN Maliki has been aware that it is really important to give additional competence for its graduates to support their participation in international community; mastering international language (English and Arabic) is what UIN Maliki has done so far to suppot the students. By mastering these two international languages, it is expected that UIN Maliki Malang graduates are ready to take participation in international community.

Research and community services are the part of academic field that must be developed in accordance with UIN Maliki Malang readiness of being WCU. To facilitate both aspects, UIN Maliki Malang has had a regular plan of research and community service. Both are planned to be implemented for wider range communities, not only for regional but also for international. So, the beneficiaries of UIN Maliki research and community service will be wider also. This is in line with one of characteristics of WCU that acquiring the university to have a more global participations both research and community service. The more an university has wider cooperation with some foreign institutions or communities, the more exist it will be as a World Class University. That’s why having as many as possible researches and community services to international community is a must for UIN Maliki Malang to strengthen its position in international community.

In addition, it is a must to have a broader cooperation with other countries to support UIN Maliki existance in international community. Why? This is very important because it is to boost the university’s competitiveness and it is also insightful to strengthen the academic capacity that has been owned. Besides, international cooperation as a part of the education globalization needs to be built to enrich the competence and experience of UIN Maliki Malang academics in the international community. So far, UIN Maliki Malang has more than 20 partner countries spread of Asia, Europe, and Africa that hand in hand cooperate each other to strengthen both academic and non academic aspects in university.

All in all, having a good preparation of being WCU for UIN Maliki Malang is considerably needed. What has been done by UIN Maliki Malang nowadays shows that UIN Maliki Malang is serious to improve its quality welcoming WCU. It is a dream, slow but sure, will come true soon. If UIN Maliki, as institution, is ready for that, what about you reader???