General education and higher education, especially at Universitas Prasetiya Mulya, are oriented toward the futures; short, medium, long, and very-long ones.
In my forty-year of service, I always strain myself to imagine what the future in its main contours would look like when current students ascended to the peak of their career life. Although speculative in nature, such imagining is necessary for designing today’s learning.
Universitas Prasetiya Mulya centres itself in designing and nurturing well-rounded citizens that are capable to compete and cooperate successfully in life’s co-evolution. Through “Collaborative Learning by Enterprising,” we push cross-discipline learning. Students in our three schools–School of Business and Economics (SBE) and School of Applied Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)— School of Law and International Studies (SHSI) are encouraged to take cross-discipline courses and participate in “catalytic research projects” that are aimed to define ideas on knowledge-based businesses; testing them strategically and technically, incubating them into business, and offering them to venture capitalists in collaboration with industries.
To cater the needs of students from the rest of the world and to elevate the level of cultural diversity of the student body, some programs at Universitas Prasetiya Mulya are run entirely in English.
We are aware of the improbable journey to become entrepreneurs. In Indonesia, only 35 out of 1000 working people belong to the entrepreneurs category. When the world is running out of natural resources, or when muscles can no longer produce enough employment or add meaningful value, it is knowledge, particularly scientific knowledge, that societies have to turn to.
Within such a landscape, universities need to act vigorouly, if not primarily, as centres of entrepreneur formation. Becoming a knowledge-driven entrepreneur ranks highest in the hierarchy of learning outcomes at Universitas Prasetiya Mulya.
Indeed, the 2020s is a herculean decade for education due to the outbreak of the Covid19 pandemic. By 1 February 2021, Coronavirus19 has infected 103 million (1.1 million Indonesians) and terminated 2.2 million (30 thousand Indonesians) people. The outbreak of this pandemic comes with a huge price: a huge number of businesses failed, and millions of jobs are lost. For universities, the loss of learning has been particularly saddening.
Universitas Prasetiya Mulya has adjusted quickly to the emerging learning environment. Our investment in digital capacity before the outbreak of Covid19 paid off highly, enabling us to switch to online learning almost seamlessly and immediately.
With more investment to strengthen our hybrid and virtual learning infrastructures following its blended learning trajectory, Universitas Prasetiya Mulya is ready to serve. Our strong foundation for an effective and innovative “Collaborative Learning by Enterprising” will enable us to pool resources to mine, develop, and provide impactful new products and services out of the increasingly digital space of science and technology of complexity.
We embrace potential students and partners at our state-of-the-art campuses at Cilandak, Jakarta, and Bumi Serpong Damai, Tangerang; also at our growing virtual learning space.
Jakarta, 1 February 2021
Djisman Simandjuntak
