UGM Vice-Rector for Education, Research, and Student Affairs, Prof. Dr. Ir. Djagal Wiseso Marseno M.Agr., said Universitas Gadjah Mada had to become an adaptive and innovative university in dealing with changes amidst Industry 4.0. In his opinion, if UGM was resistant to such changes, it would get left behind. “UGM has to be adaptive to changes, don’t get resistant, challenges facing universities in the future are getting more complex,” said Djagal opening Seminar Tech Day in the UGM Vocational School on Thursday (25/10).
According to Djagal, UGM had to anticipate what had been predicted by education experts that there would be times when universities would no longer be needed by young people, because all required skills are ready in the digital world that can be accessed freely.
“Education experts predict that we would see the death of university, because campuses were no longer interesting to get a certain competence. They could get it via Youtube tutorials, for example. Big companies would no longer take into account where a prospective recruit has graduated from. If competent enough, join us,” he said.
Djagal said a university needs to see the importance of skills education to improve the graduate competence. He further appreciated the UGM Vocational School that collaborated with Huawei to improve the students’ skills. “Skills are no less important than science. Many western countries have shifted to skills track,” he said.
Therefore, higher education, said Djagal, had to team up with the industry to develop the skills of the students. “Higher education institutions cannot stand on their own, because the challenge is very hard and what has been done by the Vocational School and Huawei is very much required in Industry 4.0,” he said.
Vice-President of Huawei, Yuan Ming, said his office was committed to continuing cooperation with UGM. The Chinese company established in 2000 has developed smartphone production, infrastructure, and big data services. “We plan to release 5G technology smartphones even if in Indonesia the 4G technology has lasted for three years,” he said.
According to Yuan Ming, cellphone generation products continued to be developed along with the needs of the new generation that wants updated product and technology. “Going forward, we keep making innovation to catch up with the need of the new generation and newer technology,” he said.
Huawei has 180 thousand of staff working in 170 nations, and 80 percent of the staff work in research and development in line with the human resource competence in each nation. In Indonesia the company recruited 2000 staff and 86 percent are local staff.