Every nation dreams of a glorious future.

The realization of the fervent wish considerably depends on the quality of its human resources and, to a lesser extend, on the riches of its natural resources. The best and only way to produce qualified human resources is the provision of flawless education systems. The importance of the roles of education in a country's development and advancement has been recognized since ancient times, such as in ancient Sparta and Athens. In those cities, education was laid as a foundation/central pillar -- to which the highest priority was given -- for the growth of their civilizations. In the course of their history up until now, more and more countries are placing education on the top in their list of priorities. | Sun, 01/27/2008 4:00 AM | Supplement The extent to which a nation has been successful in improving its education serves as a barometer for measuring the level of its advancement. Indonesia should give heed to this hard fact due to the fact that we still lag far behind most other countries, even within ASEAN, except newly born Timor Leste. The retardation in the progress in our education sector is reflected in the Human Development Index report 2007, which ranked Indonesia number 107 with a score of 0.728. This is far exceeded by the neighboring countries: Singapore ranked 25th with a score of 0.894, Malaysia 63rd and Thailand 78th with the scores 0.811 and 0.781 respectively. The Human Development Index is an indicator designed to measure a nation's quality of life, access to proper education, life expectancy, living standards and the level of literacy. There have been some significant efforts taken in Indonesia in developing formal education at all levels; from elementary to university education. These are expected to implement education according to Law No. 20/2003 on the national education system, Chapter II, Article 3 as follows: The functions of national education are to develop the people's abilities and to enhance a strong and well-developed civilization, in the framework of developing living conditions, leading to the realization of the learners' potentials to become individuals with faith and strong belief in God Almighty, who are noble, healthy, knowledgeable, skillful, creative, independent and ultimately become democratic, responsible citizens. On the quantity angle, there have been significant developments in education in the last 10 years. However, in terms of quality, not much advancement has been made. The quality level is not equal among educational institutions. Only institutions with strong financial support can provide high quality teaching and learning systems. They are able to attract upper class students to study at their campuses. As a result, they can charge high tuition fees, and get more money to finance the institutions. Less financially viable institutions cannot compete. They still face difficulties in offering good education, let alone making any expansion. If this problem is not resolved soon, the quality of the Indonesian education system will sink further, and be unable to keep pace with the rapid advancements in this era of globalization. At the beginning of the 21st century, the wave of globalization is getting mightier and more inclusive. Advancements in technology and the dynamic global changes have raised a new public awareness in Indonesia, that this nation cannot survive on its own. Indonesia stands in the middle of a new open world, in which individuals have the right to compare their lives with other nations.

To improve the quality of education in Indonesia, a deep analysis is required to find out the factors affecting it. Education as a system consists of three key components: raw input, education or learning process, and the output. Other components that need to be considered include the macro environment (ideology, politics, economy, social and cultural powers and work ethics) and the instructional environment (infrastructure, natural resource, human resources, work mechanism, curriculum and other supporting agents). Considering the above factors, the vision of quality education must be laid out primarily in the aspirations of society as its customers and stakeholders above anything else: "putting customers first". Education providers must know their customers, so that they will be able to identify customers' needs and wants. Based on customers' needs and wants, education providers can decide what kind of education system should be applied. This includes the curriculum, lecturers'/teachers' requirements, teaching and learning process, materials, and so on. All the efforts should be made in the hope that the Indonesian education system will meet the international quality assurance, as well as satisfy customers' expectations, or indeed exceed their expectations. To encourage quality education aiming to reach international standards, educational institutions are obliged to have outstanding leadership, a leader who can perform the pivotal role as a driving force for the organization in achieving its competitive advantages through the organization's profound awareness of the need for maintaining competitive strengths within the strategy for winning in the competitive arena and sustaining longterm competitive results. Therefore, leadership and competitive strength results are extremely important variables for promoting the competitive advantages of an education institution. The leaders' capability should include personal integrity, the ability to be proactive, resourcefulness and professional management skills. A leader who possesses these attributes will assuredly behave consistently, honestly, reliably. They will put the highest priority on the organizational interests over their own. They will abide to the principles of democracy by being open, polite, ethical and visionary, creating a healthy competitive atmosphere within the organization and encouraging and mobilizing the organization's resources in order to gain competitive advantages. In the education area, a leader must have the ability to promote competitive strengths. The competitive strengths may include relevance of curriculum content, teaching and learning process, teaching staff welfare, quality of teaching staff, financial capabilities, networking and quality of graduates. In terms of curriculum content relevancy, it must match and link with the industry needs and the needs of the public at large; there must be a match and link between elementary, secondary and college/university education. This relevancy must be continuously updated and reviewed, so there will be no more gaps between the industry requirements and the educational institutions' offerings. In order to keep pace with the fast growing industry, educational institutions should adopt and focus on the competency-based curriculum. This kind of curriculum emphasizes performance, in which students are encouraged to demonstrate their area of competence, and to perform a real job.

To uphold the quality of the curriculum, the teaching and learning process must be conducted up to ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) standards. We have to admit that ISO standards have worldwide recognition and a distinguished reputation. These standards are able to maintain quality in the education institution. The other major aspect that equally needs our attention is lecturers'/teachers' welfare. Lecturers/teachers must have specialized skills or competencies in order to deliver quality teaching. The competencies include personal competency, social competency and professional competency. It is fully justifiable that lecturers/teachers earn better remuneration to match their heavy duties in ensuring the quality education process. Lecturers/teachers' performances hopefully will increase in line with the better remuneration. To maintain an organization's sustainability, a leader of an educational institution should have assiduous concern over the continuous improvement of financial capabilities. By having good financial capabilities, the institution will always be able to develop, grow and survive in the face of a dynamic external environment. Many options are available to increase financial capabilities; both through concerted internal and external efforts. Therefore, an institution should maintain relationships and develop networks with other educational institutions and industry. The output derived from the competitive strengths is highly qualified graduates. If this can be sustained, we can absolutely win in the competitive arena and will not face any difficulties in recruiting students with high emotional and intellectual intelligence, due to the institution's brand image that has already been well developed in the minds of the public.

Today the Indonesian government was launched amid vociferous-school programs RSBI (international school geography) and SBI (Level School Indonesia). The government set a benchmark that can be practically no half-hearted, the government set that at least 1 district should have school RSBI 1, it is not adapted to the readiness of each school in the district, infrastructure problems, instructors and others. back to the quality of education in our country, whether the quality of education in Indonesia is now good enough, so that the government dared to take the decision of each school district RSBI? I think the quality of education in Indonesia is less satisfactory. infrastructure still exists which can not be used optimally dimasing each school, not to mention the added quality of teachers and students of human resources, in terms RSBI, teachers must be able to convey the material to their students to use 2 languages (English-Indonesian), this indeed is a well, students have been educated to compete dikancah prospects internationally, but according to the fact that there are now, teachers are able to convey the material is only 2 languages English teacher, another teacher was used to bahaas english material presented does not appear boring to students.

different from the existing private schools in the city of big cities, independent school to reach the stage of international school, with a foundation that initiates, for example, schools have established the foundation of Muhammadiyah. all the infrastructure can be used optimally, I think the high tuition costs, comparable to the facilities provided, unlike public schools. Public school recently set prices too high fees, especially schools that are independent, any costs from the school itself, but can not be used dasilitas optimally. who knows what might be the flow of funds illegally or are the funds actually received less. when compared with education abroad, we are far behind education, for example just our neighboring countries, Singapore and Malaysia, two countries, once studied to us, many students are sent to siswinya was educated in Indonesia, but now the opposite, many sons and daughters of the nation who fled abroad was educated abroad. why education in Indonesia can not grow rapidly as the other Nordic countries, whether the error measures taken by the government, or we are not ready to compete internationally scaled?