Page 29 - Universitas Terbuka Center of Excellence In Asia 2010 and The World 2020 (A Journey Towards a Leading Open and Distance Education Institution 1984-2008)

teacher education was moved up to Diploma Program II for SMP teacher and
Strata 1 for SMA teachers, after students had worked for three years in schools.
In fact, to send them out for further education was not easy, because there

were no stand-in teachers in schools. In addition, the budget for the scholarships

was very high. The new teachers graduated from IKIP were always sent to the
rapidly developing new secondary schools due to the increasing number of pupils
graduated from the lnpres Elementary Schools.

The only way to further their education was by DE method. In 1981, DE for

Diploma II SMP teachers and Strata 1 for SMA teachers - that was directly
managed by DIKTI and supported by some IKIPs - started to operate. The
operation faced some constraints, because DIKTI was not an educational

institution although it was helped by the bigger institutions of IKIPs.
The other constraint faced by government in the third period of Indonesian

Five-year Development (Repelita) was that there were significant numbers of
secondary high school graduates who had difficulties in entering the limited

number of available universities. In the early Repelita IV, secondary high school
graduates reached about 600.000 students. This number rapidly increased to 1,1

million students at the end of Repelita IV. While the established higher or
tertiary education institutions were only able to accommodate about 400,000

students, it would be short of place for about 700.000 students, if all of the
secondary high school graduates wanted to further their study at higher

education institutions. One of the missions of the Repelita IV was to provide
educational opportunities equally. It had been difficult if the government had only

relied on the expansion of convention-nal higher education institutions,
considering the geographical condition of Indonesia comprising more than 7000

populated islands.

7