Raja Ampat, West Papua. The Bandung Institute of Technology, or ITB, has been collaborating with Chinese technology giant Huawei to provide training on the latest transmission control protocol and internet protocol (TCP/IP) technologies for more than a decade.

“We have been in this cooperation since 2010 I guess. Huawei provides some IP networking equipment in our laboratory and also certification training and education for students and lecturers,” Ridwan Effendi, an associate professor with the institute, said in a recent interview.

Students from any program can join the course and learn IP network application in a real-world situation from certified instructors, he said.

“Every year we have around 100 students participating in this program. The equipment is also used in laboratory practices by students from the electrical engineering and the telecommunication program,” he added.

Having such advanced facilities is very helpful for students to learn the applicable technology and develop their ability to design IP networks with the latest technology, Ridwan said, adding that he expected the collaboration to continue for the coming years.

In order to improve the quality of ITB graduates, the institute continues to adapt the curriculum to the latest ICT development and collaborate with industrial players, Ridwan said.

Citing a recent study, he said there was a huge gap in the number of students between social sciences and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. 

There is an estimate of 5.4 million social sciences students or 79 percent as opposed to 1.4 million STEM students (21 percent) in Indonesian universities, he said.

Indonesia is ranked lower than Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore in terms of the program for international student assessment (PISA) covering science, math, and reading, he added.

ITB is one of 62 top universities in the Southeast Asia region with whom Huawei has established a partnership on information and communication technology (ICT) knowledge-sharing program, Huawei Indonesia CEO Jacky Chen has said. 

Earlier this year, the Chinese company also launched an academy to train Indonesian students into “digital talents”. Huawei has said they target at least 100,000 students to graduate from the course in the next few years.

Huawei, which builds ICT infrastructure and network in Indonesia, claims the local unit has more than 2,000 employees of mostly Indonesian citizens in 16 regional offices and more than 100 service points from the western provinces in Sumatra to the easternmost province of Papua.