On Thursday September 18 a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Indonesian Ministry of Education. The MoU builds upon various existing cooperation agreements in the field of education, and aims at enhancing the quality of higher education for human resources development in Indonesia through exchange of knowledge, experience and means between the Republic of Indonesia and the Netherlands.

One of the main instruments for capacity development in Indonesia is the StuNed Scholarship Program, which is financed by the Government of the Netherlands and executed by the Netherlands Education Support Office (NESO) Indonesia in Jakarta. The StuNed Scholarship Program is specifically designed for enhancing the professional knowledge and competencies of university and development staff of the government, the private sector and education institutes in Indonesia. The available budget for the StuNed scholarship program amounts to approximately Euro 5.5 million per year (approximately 74 billion IDR). Under this amount approximately 200 Indonesian students benefit yearly from post doctorate studies in the Netherlands and improve their professional knowledge and skills

The MoU was signed by the Ambassador of the Netherlands, Dr. Nikolaos van Dam, and Director-General Higher Education of the Indonesian Ministry of Education, Dr. Fasli Jalal PhD.

In his speech Ambassador Van Dam emphasised that this MoU builds on a long tradition of cooperation between the Netherlands and Indonesia in the field of education. He added: “It will further enhance our excellent cooperation to pursue the improvement of the quality of higher education for human resources development through the exchange of knowledge, experience and means between Indonesia and the Netherlands.”