News Talks podcast: Will Indonesian HE take the world by storm?

Over the past 20 years, Asia has cemented its universities among the top in Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings, from the historic University of Tokyo to what Forbes has called China’s “power factory”, Beijing’s Tsinghua University.

According to John Ross, APAC editor at THE, this direction of travel represents the rightful reclamation of the continent’s educational muscle, after decades of colonial upheaval and regime change. Indonesia, however, remains somewhat overlooked.

But with President Prabowo Subianto, who assumed office in 2024, celebrating the country’s strongest first-half economic growth in more than a decade, there’s clear national ambition to spur it on further.

On this week’s episode of News Talks, reporter Georgia Luckhurst talks to John Ross about what role Indonesia’s universities may play in the government’s ambitious plans. They discuss what Indonesian universities can offer the world, and how they are trying to assert their place on the global stage.