Thursday, July 03, 2008

FEUI Economists and Nationalism

This is an unusual post which prompted by an extra-ordinary article written by first year FEUI student in Jakarta Post (click here).

FEUI, where all contributors of this blog get our bachelor degree, economists are getting more than our proportionate share of being called less than fully nationalist. Even accused by some of selling out .

The media played significant part to perpetuate bifurcation between the use of market power for the benefit of the people and to apply free market principled at all cost.


The first is usually FEUI economists' position and the second is what the public judge us to be.

One of the class by Prof Dorodjatun that still clearly stamped in my mind was when he stated that FEUI economist must always be ready to be summon to serve the nation and Indonesian people.

Putera wrote in his article that"The economics that I study at FEUI is not the science of greed; it is knowledge that can be applied to solve important social problems that Indonesia is dealing with at the moment"
....and that's why we (want to) become economist!



10 comments:

Unknown said...

great to see something positive about economics for once!

Berly said...

They say with great power come great responsibility.

Either FEUI economist have not act responsibly or we dont have great power :-)

Anonymous said...

"The media played significant part to perpetuate bifurcation between the use of market power for the benefit of the people and to apply free market principled at all cost.

Being an FEUI alumnus myself, I believe there's a grain of truth on the public perception. Some fellow FEUI alumni do tend to have a market fundamentalist view on certain economic issues, believing any government interventions as distorting the 'ALMIGHTY' Market. Although they don't represent majority, their loud voice has made all of us painted the same color by the general public.

Anonymous said...

there should not a room for complacency in this issue. At the end of the day, i just found a bothersome fact...i realized those famous "economists/bureaucrats " told you about their jobs, nationalism, and so on because....well unfortunately they were not prepared for teaching at all!!!. A substantial part of lecture time was used to keep us away from the topics. Don't forget a first year students are always impressed with famous people and finally in final year, they realize they take a wrong course (economics...d'oh).

I graduated from FEUI and no proud of being FEUI community

Berly said...

Now we are on to something.

@Hendro Prasetyo:

I think FEUI also have many not market-at-all-cost-economist. Sri Edi dan Faisal Basri come first to mind.

But we also need to acknowledge that people and media that dont like views from FEUI economists is too readily to dimiss it as market-at-all-cost.

I like the way Putra put it, let's judge FEUI economists (and all economists) on the merit of their ability to solve social problems in Indonesia.

@Sukma
So what we need is optimal mix/combination between inspiration (stories, nationalism etc) and perspiration (the grueling math, concepts & curves that a good economist should know).

Rajawali Muda said...

@sukma,as an individual you should have your own prejudice about everything, and I respect that.

But please do not over-generalize it to everybody else. I bet that there are so many students proud to learn economics, and proud being FEUI community.

Anonymous said...

@ Rajawali muda
so it refers to??? the lecturers? the students? or the case of "being proud". first you plunged into the same case of what i did actually.. proud in the sense of what? do u ever know how many of us who actually really proud of being "FEUI"? do not bet on the air, bro.

Second, please list of your lecturers at FEUI who did not come to the class and then count them and find how many of them who are also working outside as bureaucrats?

c'mon do not be so blind. the academics world is changing bro,...many smart guys are coming to the country. and those "FEUI guys" still think they're the best without improve quality. They are known by word-of-mouth but not by their publication...which is very sad :((.

sorry no proud of being feui

Rajawali Muda said...

don't be sorry sukma, that's your opinion as I will not sorry for mine.at least few people I know, are proud of being FEUI community.

I don't really care what people thinks. I just proud being FEUI community. that's all..end of story, don't share my feelings? fine with me.

without improve quality?I think you are again over-reacted, hey, I know Indonesia is evolving, which is great. But people in the faculty also changed, so it is good to have competitors. Publication? staying in Indonesia alone is a problem, take a look FEUI people staying abroad, they do publish papers and stuffs..

Anonymous said...

proud or not, being FEUI gave me 'privilleges' in getting a job...

fajar said...

salam kenal