Prabowo Collects 1,200 Professors, Dialog is Closed at the Presidential Palace in Jakarta

JAKARTA - The Minister of State Secretary Prasetyo Hadi, who is also the Spokesperson for the President of the Republic of Indonesia, revealed the reason why President Prabowo Subianto gathered 1,200 professors, deans, and rectors from various universities throughout Indonesia and held a closed-door dialogue at the Presidential Palace, Jakarta, Thursday, January 15.

"This is part of the agenda of the President as the Head of State and Head of Government to discuss, convey his views, updates on the condition of our country as well as geopolitical conditions, and the big plans that we must work on in the future," said Prasetyo, quoted by Antara, Thursday, January 15.

Pras, a nickname for Prasetyo, continued that President Prabowo's meeting with professors today was also one of the President's forms of attention to the education sector.

"If you brothers and sisters pay attention, this is part of yesterday in one week, we really want to make education, because we understand that education is one of the foundations, and the key factor. So, besides pursuing and working hard to achieve food self-sufficiency, energy self-sufficiency, one of the main foundations is human resources," continued Pras.

The dialogue session between President Prabowo and the professors, which was dedicated to the social and humanities fields, took place at 09.00 WIB.

The entire series of meetings, which consisted of a briefing by President Prabowo and a dialogue session, was closed.

Apart from that, Pras gave a little insight into the issues to be discussed.

"Actually, this discussion has also been started by the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, and Technology, yes, for example, regarding how we can accelerate the fulfillment of our doctor's needs, which based on data, we are still short of almost over 100,000. Well, we have to find ways to speed up (that, red.)," said Pras.

Pras continued that the issue regarding the improvement of the quality of domestic universities and colleges will also be one of the discussion topics.

"We are calculating and thinking about how we can reduce the operational burden at each state university, because we realize that in fact our constitutional mandate is to educate the nation, and one of them is through education at the university level so that if possible we are trying to calculate how these universities can advance and be quality, and not burden the financing for the community or for students," explained Prasetyo Hadi.