Universities and the Political Process in Southeast Asia

IN SOUTJHEAST ASIA TODAY political realities necessitate developing national loyalties among a heterogeneous youth and demand effective selection of individuals into main political and governmental agencies. The facilitation of this process of nationalization through acculturation and recruitment of potential elites are important functions of educational system at university level. Traditionally, universities in Southeast Asia have not been controlled instrumentalities of state, though they were financed from government sources. Of course, they were expected to be suppliers of higher civil servants and in Burma and Ceylon this task was performed so well that in latter pre-independence days supply was in excess of demand and term the educated unemployed became common. In Indonesia, however, situation was quite different. Supply was relatively low due to to small number of Indonesians in advanced elementary and academic secondary schools (8,88i students in I940) and in four faculties (Law, Medicine, Engineering and Literature, with 585 students in all).The demand side put Indonesians at a disadvantage because of large supply of Europeans; in I940 Europeans held i6,725 posts out of 8I,957 in Netherlands Indies and virtually monopolized higher positions of government service.2 Thus, function of university education to provide an elite corps of administrators had been well established and this tradition has carried over into first generation of independence. During colonial period, however, there emerged from this process of university training a group of political dissidents who became leaders of revolutionary, independence movements. The crucial part played by university in rise of nationalism was largely unforeseen by colonial powers in Southeast Asia. In a similar way relationships of university with political process have gone largely unobserved, unstudied, or been misunderstood by countries now independent. The university as an instrument of political adaptation represents most

Ancient history · Political process · Political science · Politics · Process (computing) · Southeast asia · Asian Studies and History · Computer Science · Educational Curriculum and Learning Methods · History · Law