Indonesia : the Bogor Institute of Agriculture

IBP faculty and staff have helped to develop and disseminate improved corn hybrids, control the brown plant hopper, improve soil fertility, develop farming and land-use techniques to promote transmigration, and promote major initiatives in natural resource management and conservation. In the educational sector, IPB's pioneering efforts in academic planning have had notable repercussions throughout Indonesia, improving the quality of students and curricula and accelerating the rate at which students complete their studies. IPB graduates are in great demand and its faculty are frequently called on by Government agencies to conduct research and provide policy advice, and by other Indonesian universities to serve as lecturers, administrators, and resource personnel. Yet a number of problems cloud the Institute's future. Pressures to expand enrollment have stretched infrastructure and human resources very thin. IPB is also being pressured by the Government to take the lead in promoting provincial universities at a time when its energies and resources are needed at IPB itself. Opportunities for faculty development are much more limited than in the past, when donors funded overseas study; few of the new staff have had the development opportunities available to their seniors. Cutbacks in Government funding have left IPB with almost no discretionary research funds, not only placing IPB's leadership in basic research in jeopardy, but leaving its very research agenda at the dictates of external agencies. If IPB is to remain a sectoral leader, it must develop a comprehensive, strategic, long-term vision and plan. Major needs are to identify a smaller number of technical specialties on which IPB can concentrate its resources and to enlist external support to maintain faculty skills, stimulate innovative approaches, respond to changing development needs, and establish long-term linkages with academic and research institutions in the industrialized and developing world.