Higher education in Indonesia: Contemporary challenges in governance, access, and quality

This chapter presents the development of Indonesian higher education since its origins to current challenges in the fields of governance, autonomy, access, equity, quality, and internationalization. Indonesia has a massive and diversified tertiary education, including experiments in community colleges and online programs. The higher educational system remains mainly centralized, with the exception of some reforms towards financial autonomy. Insufficient public funding hinders the capacity to provide adequate teaching, research, and facilities among other aspects. The consequential rise in student fees contributes to an overrepresentation of students from Java, urban centers, and higher social classes

Asia's economic growth and its impact on Indonesia's tigers

Illegal wildlife trade represents a major threat to biodiversity. Recent wildlife consumption trends across Asia have shown shifts in preference towards new species, such as Sunda pangolin, and increased volumes of consumption for longer-traded species, such as tiger. These trends are widely thought to be a result of the higher levels of wealth generated from the impressive economic growth experienced across Asia. This raises important questions regarding the role that economic growth plays as a driver of poaching on source populations of highly-prized species. As a first step to answering these, we investigate trade dynamics related to the poaching of tigers and their principal prey using a long-term biological and economic data set. The fluctuating poaching patterns recorded for tiger prey, which are locally consumed for their meat, showed no association with rising domestic beef prices, the most likely substitutable protein source. However for tiger, annual poaching rates were positively and significantly correlated with changes in local tiger skin prices that, in turn, were closely correlated with annual GDP changes in the key consumer countries. Our preliminary analysis raises further questions around the causal pathways through which rising affluence and extinction risk are linked; a question that should be posed for a wide set of species. Thus, the strong regional leadership that has enabled high economic growth across Asia and lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty should now be urgently directed to tackling illegal wildlife trade and, as a priority, to closing domestic and international trafficking routes

Identifying national health research priorities in Timor-Leste through a scoping review of existing health data.

Health research is crucial to understand a country's needs and to improve health outcomes. We conducted a scoping review and analysis of existing health data in Timor-Leste to identify the health research priorities of the country. Published and unpublished health research in Timor-Leste from 2001 to 2011 that reported objectives, methods and results were identified. Key findings were triangulated with data from national surveys and the Health Management Information System; 114 eligible articles were included in the analysis, the leading topics of which were communicable (malaria, tuberculosis, HIV and sexually transmitted diseases and dengue) and non-communicable (eye and mental health) diseases. There were 28 papers (25%) on safe motherhood, child health and nutrition, of which 20 (71%) were unpublished. The review of national indicators showed high infant, under-five and maternal mortality rates. Burden of disease is greatest in young children, with respiratory infections, febrile illnesses and diarrheal disease predominating. There is poor access to and utilization of health care. Childhood malnutrition is an important unresolved national health issue. There are several obstacles leading to under-utilization of health services. The following topics for future health research are suggested from the review: nutrition, safe motherhood, childhood illness (in particular identifying the causes and cause-specific burden of severe respiratory, febrile and diarrheal diseases) and access to and use of health services