ADB’s Polytechnics Education Development Project is helping graduates to be more responsive to the needs of the labor market in Indonesia’s priority economic sectors.

Indonesia’s polytechnic education system, comprising 32 public and 140 private institutions, significantly contributes to the development of a productive workforce. However, feedback from employers reveals that many new employees need to be retrained because their skills do not match industry needs.

Graduates from weaker polytechnic institutions can spend more than a year searching for jobs, as their training programs are considered out-of-date or poorly taught. Polytechnic education is frequently still seen as the second option among senior high school students and parents, since the quality and image of polytechnic education is generally lower than that of top-rank universities.

The project aims to improve the quality and relevance of polytechnic education to support workforce development in line with employers’ needs in five priority industry subsectors—manufacturing, infrastructure, mining, agro-industry, and tourism—identified as critical to the success of the government’s medium-term development plan.