A “comprehensive partnership” between Indonesia and the United States—to deepen relations and increase educational exchanges, including expanding the Fulbright program in Indonesia—is “steaming ahead,” reports the Chronicle of Higher Education. The work towards a renewed partnership was first set in motion at last month’s G-20 summit in Toronto, during which President Obama and Indonesia's president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, announced an initiative that will see the United States spend $165 million over the next five years on programs to “help strengthen higher education in Indonesia through educational exchanges and university partnerships.”

As the Chronicle notes:

The two governments hope to increase the number of Indonesians studying at American colleges and to link higher-education institutions in both countries.

But such work is demanding: Infrastructure constraints could hinder many Indonesian universities from getting involved in partnerships in the first place. And few American institutions have long-term experience in Indonesia, in part because the U.S. State Department warned against traveling to the country for much of the last decade after a string of terrorist bombings [note: this travel ban was lifted in 2008].

”It's a harder sell,” says Allan E. Goodman, president of the Institute of International Education, a nonprofit organization involved in international exchanges, “when 60 percent of Americans can't even find Indonesia on a map.”

But Mr. Goodman, who has led two recent delegations of U.S. college leaders to Indonesia, argues that the country has much to offer American academics and students, as a unique laboratory to study issues as varied as politics (it’s the world's largest Muslim-majority democracy) and seismology (the island nation is hit by some three earthquakes a day). What's more, bringing Indonesian students to American institutions could broaden U.S. knowledge of the world's fourth-most-populous country.

”Just like we care about India and China, we should care about Indonesia,” Mr. Goodman says. “The future depends on a lot more Indonesians understanding the United States and a lot more Americans understanding Indonesia.”

The focus on this renewed educational partnership will be in several areas:

The two countries want to support collaborations that center on improving curriculum, research, teacher quality, and assessment capabilities at Indonesian universities, says Alina Romanowski, deputy assistant secretary of state for academic programs at the department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

…The State Department is also expanding the Fulbright Program in Indonesia, including financing a new program focused specifically on encouraging scholarship in critical areas in science and technology. The Indonesian Fulbright program will become one of the largest in the world, Ms. Romanowski says.

Officials from both countries say enhancing student and faculty exchanges will be a critical piece of the bilateral higher-education strategy. Such partnerships “build bridges,” Ms. Romanowski says, imagining the linkages that could grow out of a graduate-student exchange. “Who knows what will happen 25 years from now when they are publishing articles together or doing research together?”