After Reaching the Academic Heights of a Degree, What Comes Next?

For generations, Indonesian families have made the same sacrifice: educate their children as far as possible because a degree should lead to a better life. Parents have sold rice fields, taken out loans, cut household spending or sent children far from their villages to pursue that promise.

The diploma displayed on a family wall represents more than completed schooling. It embodies one generation’s hope that the next will live better. The essay calls this the social contract of education, and says that contract now faces a new question: what happens when higher education no longer guarantees a place in the world of work?

Large numbers of unemployed university graduates cannot be explained simply by saying that too few jobs exist. Indonesia’s labor market data show a more complicated picture. In February 2026, the labor force reached 154.91 million people. Some 147.67 million were employed, nearly 1.9 million more than a year earlier, while the open unemployment rate fell to 4.68%. The economy is creating jobs, but the more difficult questions concern the kind of jobs being created and the kind of people the education system is producing.

The essay argues that graduate unemployment should not be read as a verdict that education has failed. It is better understood as a symptom of changing relationships among education, technology, production and employment.

For much of human history, physical labor served as the main productive asset. Agricultural societies needed workers to cultivate land. The Industrial Revolution brought people together with machines, while the following century produced computers and a knowledge economy. Higher education then became one of the main routes into the middle class. The author, Azis Subekti, identifies the tension between that established expectation and the changing economy as the issue Indonesia must now confront.