By: Hafid Abbas
President, the Indonesia Association of Community Education (APENMASI)
Indonesia needs to rethink what Pendidikan Masyarakat — Community Education — should accomplish in the 21st century.
With Community Education programs now offered at approximately 24 universities across Indonesia, at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, the country possesses an important national platform for reaching communities beyond conventional schooling. The question is whether these programs are preparing graduates merely to manage community learning programs, or to become agents capable of creating jobs, generating income and helping communities escape poverty.
The answer should be a decisive renewal of the curriculum around the Knowledge-Based Economy (KBE).
The Asian Development Bank has emphasized that developing Asian economies need to move toward knowledge-based growth by strengthening four interconnected pillars: innovation, information and communication technology, education and skills, and the economic and institutional environment. ADB also points to the possibility of using new technologies to leapfrog conventional stages of development.
For Indonesia, this agenda should begin where poverty and unemployment are most visible: in communities.
The purpose of reforming Community Education should therefore be straightforward: every graduate should leave university equipped not only to seek a job, but to create opportunities for work and income for others.
Four curriculum transformations deserve particular attention.
First is put the digital economy within reach of the poor. The first transformation is to make information and communication technology a central instrument of Community Education. Digitalization should not be treated merely as a method for delivering online lectures. It should become an instrument for creating livelihoods.
A poor household with a smartphone, an internet connection and appropriate skills can potentially participate in markets far beyond its village. Digital platforms can connect home-based producers with consumers, farmers with buyers, artisans with global markets, and young people with remote work and digital services.
This requires Community Education graduates to understand e-commerce, digital marketing, online financial services, content creation, digital platforms, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies — but, crucially, to understand how these tools can be adapted to the realities of low-income communities.
ADB has emphasized that ICT can help developing countries leapfrog stages of economic development, while stressing that technology must be accompanied by appropriate policies, capacity, partnerships and local leadership.
The curriculum should therefore ask a practical question: How can one internet connection become an economic asset for an entire household or community?
That is a very different educational mission from simply teaching computer literacy.
Second is turn students into community researchers and innovators. This transformation should place research at the heart of Community Education.
Every undergraduate should become familiar with both quantitative and qualitative research methods. At master’s and doctoral levels, this capacity should become more sophisticated: identifying structural problems, mapping local resources, understanding markets, measuring poverty and unemployment, testing innovations and evaluating social impact.
Why? Because Indonesia’s greatest economic resources are often hidden in plain sight.
A community may possess coconut, fisheries, agricultural products, traditional crafts, tourism potential, indigenous knowledge or cultural assets, yet lack the knowledge to convert them into higher-value products and sustainable enterprises.
Research can reveal these opportunities.
The Community Education student should therefore spend less time merely studying communities from a distance and more time studying with communities.
This approach is consistent with the earlier university model developed around Centers of Technology and Centers of Excellence, in which universities map local resources, integrate community economic activities into educational programs, and align research and community service with market demand.
The objective is to move from research about the poor to research with the poor — and ultimately research that enables people to move out of poverty.
Third, build 24 Centers of Excellence around Indonesia’s economic diversity. This reform should be institutional. The approximately 24 universities offering Community Education should not all attempt to become identical. Instead, each should develop one or more Centers of Excellence (CoE) reflecting the distinctive economic potential, resources and needs of its surrounding region.
The principle is simple: one university, one or more areas of excellence, one economic corridor, and one national network of knowledge.
This approach can draw an important lesson from the European experience. The strength of the European economy does not rest on every country producing everything. Rather, different countries have developed particular areas of specialization and then connected them through a larger economic system. Germany, for example, is internationally recognized for advanced manufacturing and engineering, while Switzerland has developed particular strengths in precision industries and watchmaking, and the Netherlands has built distinctive capabilities in agriculture, horticulture and related technologies. Specialization does not create isolation; it creates complementarity.
Indonesia could apply a similar principle to its 24 Community Education universities. Universities in Sulawesi could concentrate on agro-industry and the processing of local agricultural resources; those in Bali on tourism and hospitality; universities in Kalimantan on energy, mining and sustainable resource development; those in Maluku on fisheries and the blue economy; while universities in Java could focus on manufacturing, services, creative industries and the digital economy.
The objective is not to divide Indonesia into separate economic territories, but to create complementary centers of knowledge and innovation whose strengths reinforce one another. A successful innovation in Sulawesi should be accessible to universities and communities in other parts of Indonesia; a tourism model developed in Bali should generate knowledge for other destinations; and digital technologies developed in Java should help connect producers throughout the archipelago to wider markets.
These Centers of Excellence should therefore become more than university facilities with another signboard. They should function as living laboratories where students, researchers, communities, government and enterprises work together to transform local knowledge and resources into productive economic opportunities.
The experience of Polimdo in North Sulawesi illustrates this potential. Its focus on coconut-based creative industries connects local resources with industrial partners, student learning, research, technology transfer and community empowerment.
The lesson is powerful: local resources become economic resources when knowledge transforms them into value.
If the 24 universities can develop such complementary strengths and connect them through a national knowledge network, Community Education could become more than an academic discipline. It could become an infrastructure of national economic capability—helping communities discover what they can produce, universities develop what they know best, and regions trade and learn from one another.
Last, is to create economic scale through people’s enterprises. This fourth reform may be the most consequential: Community Education should teach graduates how to create economic scale.
One of Indonesia’s persistent challenges is that millions of small producers operate separately. A farmer may produce too little to negotiate effectively with a large buyer. A home industry may lack packaging, technology, finance or market access. A village enterprise may have a product but insufficient scale.
This is where the proposed Badan Usaha Milik Rakyat (BUMR) becomes relevant.
The concept is not simply to create another business institution. It is to organize scattered community economic activities into larger value chains so that small producers can obtain better technology, financing, purchasing power, market access and bargaining capacity.
The earlier university model offers an instructive example. Tanri Abeng University developed a framework for people’s enterprises and worked with farmers to improve productivity, organize production and obtain better market access.
Imagine extending this principle across Indonesia’s roughly 80,000 villages.
Community Education graduates could become community economic organizers: identifying local resources, conducting research, organizing producers, connecting them to technology and finance, developing digital markets and building partnerships with larger enterprises.
The university would then become not merely a place where people acquire knowledge, but a place where knowledge is converted into productive capacity.
From job seekers to job creators
This is ultimately the deeper purpose of curriculum reform.
Indonesia does not need Community Education graduates who simply know how to conduct community training. It needs graduates who can diagnose poverty, identify economic opportunities, mobilize local resources, develop innovations, use digital technology, organize enterprises and build partnerships.
The undergraduate curriculum should therefore establish the foundation: digital skills, local-resource mapping, entrepreneurship, research, innovation and community enterprise.
The master’s curriculum should deepen these capabilities through economic-cluster development, social entrepreneurship, innovation management, impact evaluation, digital economy and inclusive finance.
The doctoral curriculum should generate the knowledge itself: new theories, technologies, institutional models and evidence for reducing poverty and unemployment through education and innovation.
This would transform the three missions of higher education — teaching, research and community service — into a single development ecosystem. The earlier Indonesian model similarly argued that social entrepreneurship should be integrated across the university’s tri-dharma rather than treated as an isolated activity.
The ambition should be much larger than producing employable graduates. It should be to produce graduates capable of making others employable.
If 24 universities can become interconnected Centers of Excellence, each specializing in its regional economic strengths, and if their graduates can carry knowledge, technology and entrepreneurship into thousands of communities, Community Education could become an important national infrastructure for inclusive development.
The ultimate measure of success would not be the number of courses taught or degrees awarded.
It would be whether knowledge reaches those who need it most — and whether that knowledge helps turn poverty into productivity, unemployment into enterprise, and local resources into sustainable prosperity.
That is the promise of renewing Community Education for the Knowledge-Based Economy. And perhaps the most important principle is this: Education should not merely prepare people for the economy. It should empower people to create the economy.
