The Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education (Kemenristekdikti) of the Republic of Indonesia, again, announced the clustering of Indonesian higher education institutions in 2019 at Building D Kemenristekdikti, Senayan, Jakarta, recently. This clustering was carried out to map Indonesian higher education institutions under the auspices of the Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education to improve the quality of higher education as well as to become the basis for Kemenristekdikti to provide policies according to the capacity of each of the higher education clusters.
"Our aim is to encourage Indonesian universities to advance and enter the world class. This impulse becomes very important. If we have conveyed this, we can do the mapping. The aim is to map out the universities/colleges under Kemenristekdikti on how to make their respective policies at the higher education institutions later, so that in the future we can realize high quality universities", said Minister of Research, Technology and Higher Education (Menristekdikti) Mohamad Nasir.
Politeknik Negeri Semarang (Polines) in the 2019 Indonesian Higher Education Cluster in the vocational category succeeded in achieving 4th place with a score of 1,756 in cluster 2.
The Director of Politeknik Negeri Semarang (Polines), Supriyadi, said this achievement was an encouragement for continuous improvement in creating and innovating that was sustainable. "Hopefully, it brings blessings to Polines, the environment, society, nation and country," he said. This result, he continued, was the hard work of all parties.
In 2019, Kemenristekdikti released the results of the clustering of higher education in two (2) categories, namely the Non-Vocational Higher Education (academic education) category, which consists of Universities, Institutes, and Colleges, and the Vocational Higher Education category, which consists of Polytechnics and Academy.
As for the vocational higher education category, the cluster sequence starts at cluster 2. The reason was by considering the highest achievements / scores obtained by the vocational college. So for the vocational higher education categories with a total of 1,128 higher education institutions, 4 (four) Indonesian higher education clusters were obtained with the composition: Cluster 2 totaling 5 higher education institutions; Cluster 3 is 62 higher education institutions, Cluster 4 is 545 higher education institutions, and Cluster 5 is 516 higher education institutions.
The 2019 tertiary ranking focuses on Output-Outcome Base-based indicators or assessments, namely by looking at input performance with 40% which includes Input (15%) and Process performance (25%), and 60% output performance which includes Output Performance (25%), and Outcome (35%). New indicators of assessment are the number of foreign lecturers (input criteria), online learning, completeness of the PDDIKTI report, financial reports (process criteria), the percentage of graduates who have gotten a job within 6 months, the number of citations per lecturer and the number of patents per lecturer (outcome criteria). The addition of these new indicators is an effort so that universities can actively respond to the current development, especially the fourth industrial revolution and the need for labor.
The top five vocational higher education institutions with the highest ranking in Indonesia in 2019 are: 1. Politeknik Elektronika Negeri Surabaya (score 2,276 - cluster 2), 2. Politeknik Negeri Bandung (score 2,037 - cluster 2), 3. Politeknik Negeri Malang (score 1,867 - cluster 2), 4. Politeknik Negeri Semarang (score 1,756 - cluster 2) and 5. Politeknik Pertanian Negeri Payakumbuh (score 1,720 - cluster 2).