competitive position against a ring of peer communities, assess the POLBAN’s existing and
emerging research strengths, evaluate research group within POLBAN, and identify the best
research facility which practices on a national basis. According to the results come a series of findings
and recommendations which will be integrated into the POLBAN strategic research planning.
With the purpose of increasing POLBAN academic research competitiveness A number of
strategies has been defined by the team, for examples:
1. Develop a research strategic planning based on
the self evalution; 2.
Apply research quality standard, includes; quality standards for the RD organization
3. Strengthen research groups, in particular a
research group of the competitive research subject;
4. Define
POLBAN strategic
competitive research based on the themes which meet to the
National research agenda, and industry requirements;
5. Set up technology transfer and community
services; 6.
Set up business and innovation centre; 7.
Increase IPR ; 8.
Increase external research grants. The research strategic planning is an essential
first step in the development of a results-based accountability system [3]. Therefore by doing this,
the quality of the research activities might be improved.
The strategic research planning is identified as the process of addressing the following questions:
• Who are we?
• Where are we?
• Where do we want to be?
• What do we have to work with?
• How do we get there?
• How will we know how we are doing?
To guarantee the research quality, a Research Quality Assurance Group will be set up. The group
performs the task of assuring that products or outputs of conducted research meet specified
requirements. Some decisive factors to evaluate a research topic and or a research output are specified
as followed :
• State of the art technology
• Availability of the technology roadmap
• Possibility to get the IPR
• Strategic values of the research
• Business opportunity of the products
• Acquisition of the core technology
• Product innovation.
Additionally, a specific quality procedures to guide the lecturers has been designed according to
international quality standard. In this case, the ISO 9001 is applied in POLBAN since 2008. This ISO
quality procedures
provide an
operational framework not only for RD organization in
POLBAN, but also for the whole POLBAN management system.
The RD organization success is measured according to specific quality standard. There are a
number of ways of looking RD organization effectiveness and productivity [4].
Output of RD organization can be measured by three groups, namely process measures, result
measures, and strategic indicators. POLBAN translates parameters in each group become steps of
quality standards which relate to activities, organization objectives, and long term strategic
aspect of RD organization. Some examples of quality standard are [4]:
• Number of responses sent to enquiries from
outside institution •
Number of technical reports published •
Number of patents generated •
External research grant obtained •
Number of innovation developed and adapted for commercialization
• Stability of research funding
• The degree of customer satisfactionwith
research output. Regarding to those quality standard, there are
requirements to expand the structure of research organization in POLBAN. A number of new sub-
division should be added to the existing structure of UPPM, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3. Proposed RD organization
Looking forward to the change in technology, the proposed RD organization is provided with
Technology DevelopmentImplementation
sub- division, Innovation and Product Development sub-
division, Business Incubation Commercialization etc. With applying the new RD organization, it is
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expected that the research environment might be improved, the research productivity can be
accelerated, and the research quality can be maintained, Moreover the most important is
POLBAN may contributes to the national economic development.
Strengthened linkages with Industry is obligatory
for vocational
education. This
requirement is assured by the Industrial Liaison and Marketing
sub-division. Vocational
higher education institutions such as POLBAN is the
incubator for new ideas, concepts and inventions as the research outputs, while industries provide the
means for turning them into need-satisfying products. Partnerships between industries and
POLBAN will offer the platform for accelerated national
development through
the research
activities undertaken in the vocational education. The new POLBAN RD organization is being
proposed in the Senate Academic. It is still long way to go, before the new RD organization can be
approved. Moreover, in conjunction with the change of RD organization in POLBAN, the
authorization of the existing research unit should be upgraded to comply with the additional
assignments.
4. Closing Remarks
Managing academic RD organization,
especially in vocational education is much different with managing other RD organizations
in general. The thing which makes different is the fact that research activity in higher education is
only one third of lecturer occupations. In addition to research activities, a lecture still has other
obligation for teaching and doing community services.
Research and development in vocational higher education is not a competitor for academic
research in universities. Research in university can be focused on high-tech fields or basic and applied
research areas. While research in vocational education or polytechnic should be directed into
equivalent advantages, popular subjects, and feature majors. A cooperation with corresponding
industries around the environment must be encouraged.
Relating to economic development, in the near future the role of RD activities in vocational
higher education will be more essential. As results, a better managing the RD organization becomes
imperative. In order to improve the quality of research and to increase the skills, and the research
ability of lecturers in vocational higher education, the research activities have to be focused. As an
example
research in
POLBAN might
be concentrated to development of small-and
medium-sized enterprises, and pay attention on solving crucial theoretical and practical problems
related to
local economy
and industrial
development. Currently, most of lectures in POLBAN spend
their time only for teaching, so they do not have enough time for conducting a research. This
situation should be shifted gradually. Hence, the time table shoud be re-managed to facilitate them
for conducting a research.
In order to improve the quality of research and to increase the research ability of lecturers in
vocational higher education, such as POLBAN, one of the best solution is by integrating
production, teaching and research activities to optimize their capabilities, as we can learn from
China [5].
R
EFERENCES
[1] Senate of Politeknik Negeri Bandung, Rencana Strategies Politeknik Negeri Bandung 2011 – 2015.
[2] T. M. Khalil, Management of Technology – The key to competitiveness and wealth creation, International edition,
McGraw-Hill Singapore, 2000. [3] Th. Bemelmans, “Strategic Planning for Research and
Development”, Long Range Planning, vol. 2, 1979, pp. 33- 44,
[4] R.K. Jain and H.C. Triandis, Management of RD Organizations – Managing the Unmanageable, John Wiley
Sons, new York, 1990. [5] Z. Zhang, “Orientation and strategy of applied university in
cooperative education”, http: www.seiofbluemountain.comsearchdetail.php?id=1513
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ALTERNATIVES FINANCING MODEL FOR VOCATIONAL HIGH SCHOOLS
FIELD OF CIVIL ENGINEERING STUDY PROGRAM
MachmudSugandi
gandhyy_06yahoo.com.au
Abstract
It is assumed that vocational high schools need high financing. This is due to expensive learning processes, particularly the practical learning processes, which need much funding for workshop equipment, workshop
materials, power and fuel supply, and for hiring technicians. Because of this high educational cost, vocational high schools need to find alternative of financing model to obtaining sustainable teaching-learning processes so
as to preserve the educational quality.
The result of case study conducted at the State Vocational High School in East-Java, reveals that school financing is obtained from the following sources: 83.33 from the Central Government, 3.43 from the
Province Government, 5.53 from District Government, and 2.32 from Local Community. The description of these sources indicates that the biggest percentage 77.78 is obtained from the Central Government. It is well-
known among education experts and practitioners that particularly Central Government Funding is susceptible to changes in macro-economics and economics global changing, which eventually may affect the stability of school
financing.
The uncertainty of these conditions, the schools need to find specific strategies to maintain funding sources which are not susceptible to changes caused by external factors by means of 1 doing production-based learning,
2 doing teaching-factory, and 3 providing alternate capitals “modal bergulir” and technical assistance for graduates with entrepreneurship potential. This income-generating activity is expected to provide substantial and
sustainable funding that will make the schools financially independent and able to produce skilled and productive labor. The students who are involved in the production-based learning have the competency and
experience in creating market-oriented product.
Keywords: vocational high schools, alternative financing model, income-generating activity. 1.
Introduction
It is assumed that vocational high schools need high financing than other high schools Klein,
2001. This statement is according to the theoretic and empiric study which is found in the field. It is
because practice learning needs more funding than theoretic-learning. This high financing needs due to
skills-competencies process which is done in practice-learning,
meanwhile in
cognitive- competencies it is more theoretic. Practice-learning
needs much funding to buy workshop equipment, workshop materials, maintain the equipment, for
hiring the technicians and, power and fuel supply.
Financial support for the vocational high school learning process in Indonesia, classified
into: 1 local and state government, 2 local community, 3 block grant. The amount of this
funding is different between one another depends on the variable of the student, variation of the
department, the number of school’s collaboration with industry, and in achieving block grant from
government and another sources ADB or World Bank. This financial support is regulated according
to the laws of National Education System No. 20 year 2003. Concerning this matter, there should be
aforethought in using and operating the funding, so that this funding could be used effectively and
efficiently. The variable-fund such as from local
community, collaboration with industry, production income, and block grant are easily influenced by
external factor. Meanwhile, fix-fund from local and state government is limited. However, the
vocational high school has to graduate the good alumnus which is ready to work. Regarding this
constraint, there should be another source of funding which is managed by the school itself as a
generating income so that they could handle their learning processes which are not susceptible to
changes caused by external factors.
The alternatives solution to making out these matters could be done in the learning process or
when the student graduated. The first alternative is applying production-based learning or production-
based training through competence-learning for the student in the last grade in doing productive
workshop in their own group. It means that the students likely face the real condition in industry
and have to produce a certain elements of that industry which suitable with the department of the
school. The quality of the product under the control of the industry itself, so the students must come up
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