Ministry of Religious Affairs Prepares Students for Overseas Studying Achievement

Kemenag, UIN NEWS Online - Good news for the high-achieving students. Their hope to study abroad, get a support from Kamaruddin Amin, Director General of Islamic Education Ministry of Religious Affairs.

As we all know, the Directorate General of the Ministry of Islamic Education, Ministry of Religious Affairs, since 2005 has been providing scholarships to the high-achieving students to study at several top universities in Indonesia. The santris are proved able to follow lectures in various scientific disciplines, ranging from medicine, pharmacy, industrial engineering, agriculture, and others.

After twelve years of running, Kamaruddin Amin assesses that it is time for access to the education of  to be expanded to universities abroad. Therefore, according to Kamaruddin, the Outstanding Scholarship Scholarship Program (PBSB) needs to be extended not only to domestic universities.

"We hope PBSB is not only for the study program in the country. In the future we have to formulate the steps to prepare scholarships for santri abroad, "said Kamaruddin Amin when giving speech on the coordination of PBSB with provincial Kemenag office in Bogor, Monday (03/12/2018).

For Kamaruddin, the Ministry of Religion can start from the best universities in Asia, the National University of Singapore (NUS), and possibly the next scholarship to Cairo's Al Azhar University. Scholarship program santri abroad, continued Kamaruddin, this will not merely for the development of PBSB. More than that,

"This program is also in the context of internationalization of Islamic educational institutions that became one of the Ministry of Religious Affairs through the Directorate General of Islamic Education. PBSB is very relevant to the desire to make Indonesia the center of the civilization of the Islamic world, as well as the world's Islamic study destination, "Kamaruddin said.

In Kamaruddin’s perspective, scholarships abroad are very possible for us to do. The thing that needs to be done is to keep improving its governance, considering that PBSB is now entering its thirteenth year, also its alumni number has reached three thousands.

"PBSB became one of the strategic programs of the Directorate General of Islamic Education. PBSB even includes the best program in Indonesia in the provision of scholarships for strata 1 (S1). "This program needs to be guarded and maintained in order to run well and contribute to the future of Indonesia in the future," said alumnus PhD program Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitat Bonn, Germany. (usa)