Jakarta, Sunday (17 August 2008) -- The increase of educational budget of 20 percent to be realized by the government in 2009 will be used to revitalized Mathematics and Natural Sciences programs in the scope of higher education. It is underlain by the decrease in the number of students enrolling in the field of basic sciences in university.

"From University Admission Test, it is obvious that the number of applicants for Physics major is always below specified quota. It is our challenge to bring back the popularity of mathematics and basic sciences," said the Director General of Higher Education of the Ministry of National Education Fasli Jalal, during award hand-over to performance lecturers and university students at national level of 2008 at the Ministry of National Education Building in Jakarta, Sunday night (08/17/2008).

Fasli stated, of 80 seats capacity, there are only 36 applicants and those who pass the test are only half of them or 18 people. Fasli asked university administrators to promote Mathematics and Natural Sciences study programs, such as through television trailer or dialogues concerning the features of experts in the field of Physics, Mathematics, Biology and Chemistry. In addition, he added, the Ministry of National Education will continue competition grant program that have been implemented. "In the future we will try to introduce such packages. It is expected that in the next few years we could revive basic sciences culture," he added.

Currently, Fasli stated, another study programs with less applicants is agriculture. He said that there are more than 2,900 unoccupied seats in this field. "We will try to arrange special competition grants in order to enhance its image as well to improve teaching learning process, and various research designs for these agriculture programs. We will also try to recover programs related to polytechnics," he said.

Fasli added that in the next year, it has been planned to add larger rooms for agriculture study program. He added that it is important to provide at least 20,000 research packages for 60,000 lecturers who perform research every year. Fasli explained that the main agendas for the research are food, alternative energy, water resource and health. "And these should be measured inter-sectorally from economic, psychology and community empowerment perspectives including the role of social sciences or humanities," he added.***