The Industry 4.0 Era has been the focus of the educational sector in preparing their graduates to be ready for the professional world. UPH Rector, Dr. (Hon) Jonathan L. Parapak, M.Eng.Sc. stated that UPH has prepared its students ever since they started studying in UPH through the use of digital learning. Going beyond an enrichment of digital learning, UPH aims to make sure that its graduates are ready for today’s professional scene, even before they graduate.

“To compete with the competitive professional world, UPH continues to broaden their partnerships with various industries, the most recent one being the MoU signing between the UPH Communication Science department with 20 industries. These partnerships are hoped to ease access for student internships. This is a form of our commitment in equipping students before they graduate and when they need to make the switch from their academic lives to their professional ones,” the Rector explained.

All this is shared by the Rector to graduates in UPH’s XXXIV Graduation on November 24, 2018 in UPH Lippo Village Grand Chapel. 896 students are graduated in the UPH XXXIV Graduation – 612
undergraduates, 279 graduates, and 5 postgraduates.

Along with preparing its students, UPH has also advanced its partnerships with a number of universities to improve educational quality. One of these partnerships is a dual degree program with Newcastle University in the Food Technology department and a Combined Degree program with La Trobe University, Australia, which enables students to get their Bachelor’s and Master’s in less than five years.

The Rector also shared that this year, UPH has merged into one university – which means that UPH Lippo Village, UPH Surabaya, UPH Medan, and STPPH (Pelita Harapan School of Hospitality & Tourism) now becomes one institution (ONE UPH). With this unification, UPH hopes to improve its educational and institutional quality in preparation to face the digital and industry 4.0 era.

Dr. M. Samsuri, S.Pd., M.T., Executive Secretary of LLDIKTI (Lembaga Layanan Pendidikan Tinggi) (Indonesia’s Higher Education Service Foundation) Sector III, was also present in the Graduation, and he took the time to share how UPH has set an example of a reliable institution.

“LLDIKTI always encourages higher educational institutions to maintain their students’ hard and soft skills, because we don’t only looking for competence, but also skill. UPH has shown a good rate of reliability in LLDIKTI Sector III. This is shown through UPH’s consistency in producing competent and competitive graduates. Because of this, we aim for UPH to be able to compete in the international level, getting into the top 500 or 700 of universities in the world,” Samsuri explained.

Dr. (HC) Mochtar Riady, Founder of Lippo Group, also gave his two cents to graduates. He shows how the digital era will focus on the trend of sharing economy, a term representing the fact that every part of a community will utilize facilities owned by other members – to unify all members and create a lot of job opportunities. This will also be efficient for the growth of economy. Dr. Mochtar also advises graduates on the importance of morality in the professional world.

“All the skills you have to be infused with morality. Only with good morals can we be significant people that can influence the people around us,” Mochtar said.

After November’s graduation in UPH Lippo Village, ONE UPH has accumulated 30.000 graduates now using their talents and skills through various vocations and businesses both in Indonesia and all across the world. (mt)