Education as long investment

Professor Toshiko Kinosita revealed that the human resources still very weak to support the development of industry and economy. The causes for this because the government did not place education as a paramount priority. Not ditempatkannya education as a paramount priority for the Indonesian people, from politicians to the general public and government officials, focused only pursue money to enrich themselves and did not think the length (Kompas, 24 May 2002). Teachers' opinions of Waseda University of Japan is very interesting to be considering at this time the Indonesian government began to look education as long-term investment, after all this time terabaikan education. One of the indicator is already disetujuinya by MPR to prioritize the education budget at least 20% of the APBN or APBD. This step is the beginning of the awareness of the importance of education as an investment period pangjang. At least there are three reasons for prioritizing education as a long term investment. First, education is a tool for economic development and not just economic growth. Praksis on modern management education, one of the five functions of education is the technical-economic functions at both the individual level to global level. Function technical-economic refers to the contribution of education to economic development. For example, education can help students to gain knowledge and skills necessary to survive and compete in a competitive economy. In general, that the more educated a person the income level the better. This is possible because people have a more productive when compared with the not educated. Productivity is due to someone has the technical skills obtained from education. Therefore one of the goals that must be achieved by education is to develop life skills. This is the actual direction of competency-based curriculum, life skills education and broad based education that has developed in Indonesia of late. In the United States (1992) that someone earning a doctorate average per year is 55 million dollars, 40 million dollar master, and graduate 33 million dollars. Meanwhile, further education graduates only berpanghasilan average 19 million dollars per year. In the same year, this structure also occurred in Indonesia. For example, the average, between rural and urban areas, income per year, university graduates 3.5 million, 3 million college, 1.9 million high school, and elementary school only 1.1 million rupiah. The human capital theory argues that education is the investment of human resources which benefit monetary or non-monetary. Benefits non-meneter of education is the condition of obtaining a better job, job satisfaction, efficiency, consumption, satisfaction and enjoy the retirement benefits of living longer because of the increased nutrition and health. Monetary benefits are economic benefits as additional income that is someone who has completed a certain level of education compared with income under graduate education. (Walter W. McMahon and Terry G. Geske, Financing Education: Overcoming Inefficiency and Inequity, USA: University of Illionis, 1982, h.121). Human resources who will be the main capital of the national development, especially for economic development. The more educated a person the more easy for a country to build a nation. This is because dikuasainya has skills, knowledge and technology resources by human beings so that the government more easily in the national development. by Nurkolis