Every day we hear politicians and economists talking about the demographic bonus. They say this is Indonesia's golden opportunity to become a developed nation by 2045. This is a rare moment when our productive-age population will explode, ready to support the nation's economy. Sounds great right? Like we will get super buff in national life game. But try to pause for a moment, look around you, what you see is really a bonus or maybe a disaster. Millions of new graduates graduate every year with sky-high hopes, but millions also end up intellectually unemployed. Have a diploma but no skills. Have a degree but no value. They are products of a system that places more importance on graduation ceremonies than job readiness. How can this happen? Because there is a giant gap between the products our education system produces and real-world needs. We are busy building the magnificent capital city of the Indonesian archipelago, IKN. Complete with skyscrapers, complete with promises of a smart city that is said to be free from traffic jams and floods. But we forgot to build the intellectualism of the Indonesian people who should fill and run this sophisticated city. What's the point of having the latest hardware? If the human resources software is still in beta and full of bugs. This video is not intended to blame teachers or students. This video is an emergency medical checkup for our education system framed in a high-stakes situation. Will Indonesia move up a class or just stay at the same level on the world stage? We will dissect five systemic diseases that threaten to cause our demographic bonus to expire prematurely. And most importantly, why does it ultimately become your personal responsibility to heal yourself? Because waiting for the system to change is like waiting for a campaign promise to be fulfilled for too long. The number one disease is obsession with certification instead of competence. Stamp mentality. This first disease is the most basic and ingrained. Our education system from the lowest to the highest level is not creating competent human beings, but is training us to become stamp collectors. Just think again about your life journey since elementary school, what you were chasing was the ranking on your report card and certificates made of laminated cardboard. The goal of entering junior high and high school is to be accepted into your favorite school. Entering college is a battle for the stamp of [ __ ] laude GPA on an expensive piece of paper called a diploma. We are taught that life is about collecting these stamps. The more and more prestigious the low stamps, the more successful you are considered. Competence, character, problem solving ability. Ah, that's secondary matter. The important thing is to have the stamp ready to show off at family gatherings or post on LinkedIn. This disease has even spread to government policies. Just look at the upskilling programs that exist. The intention is very good to improve the skills of our workforce. But what happens on the ground? Many people take courses not to actually gain skills, but simply to pursue a certificate of completion so they can receive incentives or to add to their CV. The system itself subconsciously encourages this stick-to-it mentality. It's like giving fever-reducing medication to a cancer patient. The symptoms may subside for a while, but the underlying disease, the obsession with certification, will worsen and spread. It is not surprising that the data shows this phenomenon. Of the many people who take part in training, in reality only around 15% are successful in getting new jobs. The rest of them just graduated from one course to another. Collecting as many digital stamps as possible but never actually working. What is the impact? This gave birth to mass intellectual unemployment . People with flashy CVs full of 3.9 GPA stamps, TOEFL certificates, and dozens of online course certificates. But when given real problems in the world of work, they are confused. They are good at answering questions. But hangs when asked to think outside the manual. Private and global companies are now fed up with this. As experts have discussed, they don't really care about your college degree anymore. The important thing is whether you can work or not. Where's your portfolio? What have you ever produced? In the era of the Gigek Economy, companies need people who are more focused and can contribute directly. Meanwhile, state-owned enterprises and government agencies, which are often still trapped in paper-based administrative requirements, end up recruiting people who are good on paper but lack practical competence. This is one of the reasons why our bureaucracy is often slow and uninnovative. The end result is that the gap between the world of education and the world of work is getting wider. And our demographic bonus is filled with young people who are academically smart but are unable to face reality. So what kind of medicine is it for you personally? stop being a stamp collector, start being a portfolio builder. Instead of wasting money and time on 10 online courses that you just watch while lying down, it's better to take one course, learn the knowledge thoroughly, and then immediately use it to create a real project, no matter how small. One real project in your portfolio is much more valuable and speaks volumes than 10 PDF certificates. Disease number two, dinosaur-era curriculum in the AI era. This second disease made the stamp that Ulo got from the first disease even more worthless. The problem is not only how we learn, but also what we learn. Our curriculum often feels like a relic from a bygone era forced to live in the age of artificial intelligence. You spend years memorizing the Latin names of plants, complicated physics formulas, or the dates of past battles . It's not that all of that isn't important, but the question is, how relevant is all of that compared to the skills needed to survive in 2025 and beyond. At a time when the world needs AI experts, data scientists, and green energy specialists, our curriculum is still busy asking students to memorize the Latin names of plants they have never even seen in their lives. Why did this happen? Because changing the curriculum is a more complicated bureaucratic process than building a temple. It took dozens of meetings, hundreds of stamps, and thousands of cups of coffee from a committee in Jakarta that probably never actually taught a class of 40 students with varying levels of understanding . As a result, our curriculum is always several years behind real-world developments. Our schools are obsessed with printing walking dictionaries. Even though every child now has a much more complete dictionary in their trouser pocket. The impact was brutal. Our graduates are like knights who have been trained their entire lives to fight with swords and shields. Then suddenly thrown into a modern battlefield filled with drones and missiles. They were shocked, confused, and unprepared. The skills they honed for 12 years, such as the ability to memorize large amounts of information, suddenly became worthless because Google and GPT chatbots could do it in 0.3 seconds. They have a diploma but don't have the weapons to fight in the real world of work . So what's the medicine for you? If you change the school curriculum then build your own curriculum. Think of your school or campus as a provider of value-for-money package menus. You still have to eat it, but you are free to buy snacks and get additional nutrition from outside. Use the internet as your second campus to identify 3 to 5 skills that are most needed in your dream industry right now. Whether it's digital marketing, UIU design, prom engineering, or even public speaking. Then allocate time each week to learn those skills independently via YouTube, Corsera or other platforms. Stop being a passive consumer of outdated curriculum. Be the principal of your own education system whose curriculum is updated every month, not every decade. Disease number three, failure to teach critical thinking. The culture of swallowing it raw. This third disease is perhaps the most dangerous. Our education system not only fails to provide relevant skills, but also fails to instill the most fundamental software in our brains. Critical thinking skills. On the contrary, what is instilled is a culture of swallowing it raw. You were educated for over 12 years to be a passive recipient of information. The teacher explains, you take notes. The textbook says A, you memorize A. The exam asks A, you answer A. There is no room to ask why A. What if B? What is the proof that A is true? Students who ask too many questions are often considered strange or even rebellious. The mentality is ABS. As long as you are happy. Don't argue with the teacher. Don't question the textbook. The important thing is to be obedient and memorize. Why is this culture so ingrained? Because teaching critical thinking is hard. It is much easier to teach with a one-way method than to facilitate a lively but noisy debate. It is much easier to judge memorized answers than to judge the quality of arguments. This is a shortcut the system has chosen to maintain order in the classroom. The real-world impact is horrific and El sees the evidence every day. Why are millions of Indonesians so easily deceived by illegal online loans or believe hoaxes from family WhatsApp groups? Why do so many people get caught up in fraudulent investment schemes that promise unreasonable profits ? The answer is simple, because we are never really trained to think critically. We are taught to swallow information, not chew and question it. In the world of work the impact is just as severe. This creates graduates who are good at executing orders but are paralyzed when faced with problems that are not in the manual. They wait for instructions, unable to take initiative. When given data, they can only report it back, not analyze it and find the story behind the data. They are good operators, but not great problem solvers. So, what's the cure for you personally? You have to consciously build a gym for your critical muscles. The way to do this is to apply the five whys method. Every time you receive information or an order, don't accept it immediately. Ask yourself why five times until you find the root of the problem or the most fundamental reason. For example, the boss asked me to make this report. Why? So you know the sales progress. Why should you know? So you can make a decision. Why is this decision important and so on? This simple exercise forces your brain to stop being a passive receiver and start being an active analyzer. Disease number 4, the prestige of the major that creates a skill mismatch. This fourth disease is a matter of prestige. In Indonesia, choosing a major in college is often not about what your talents are or what the market needs, but about which major is the coolest to show off at family events. There is an invisible caste in the world of college. Medicine, engineering, and accounting are Brahmin castes. Meanwhile, majors in design, literature, and especially philosophy are often considered to be part of the Sudra caste with a bleak future. As a result, millions of students are forced into safe and prestigious majors that are completely unsuited to their talents and interests. And this creates a super serious problem on a national scale. Skill mismatch. Mass mismatch between the skills possessed by graduates and the skills required by industry. Try opening the news. On the one hand, you hear complaints from technology companies in Indonesia that it's so difficult to find qualified local talent that they are ultimately forced to import foreign workers. On the other hand, you hear news about millions of management or communication graduates who are unemployed or working in jobs that are not related to their majors. Our country needs modern agricultural experts to achieve food sufficiency. But everyone is told to become a civil servant. We need innovators in agriculture to feed 270 million stomachs. But our campus is busy producing international relations experts who end up becoming administrative staff. Why, prestige? It's like a country that needs a lot of chefs, but all its citizens are forced to go to school to become accountants. Then we wonder why our food doesn't taste good. The impact is clear. The birth of intellectual unemployment who have flashy degrees but whose competencies are not needed by the market. They spent 4 years and hundreds of millions of rupiah learning something they don't love and can't use. This is not just an individual loss, but a waste of human resources on a national scale. Our demographic bonus is filled with people who have misallocated their skills. In fact, in the era of economic geeks, what's important is no longer your degree, but the value and portfolio you can demonstrate. The remedy is to treat yourself like a smart investor. Do a due diligence for your future with three questions. Question one, internal assets. What skills do I have now? Question two, market analysis. What skills will be expensive in 5 years? Question three, profit projections. How do you turn that skill into income? The answers to those three questions are the best investment proposal for your life. Stop investing in prestige. Start investing in competencies where there is a clear market. Disease number five, erosion of character and the mentality of the insider path. And this is the final disease, terminal cancer that makes all previous diseases worse. Our education system often fails miserably in instilling the most fundamental thing, namely character. What is the proof? We have a system that subconsciously values the end result more than the process. The important thing is to get good grades, no matter how you cheat. The important thing is to graduate, no matter if the thesis is a joke. We are taught to look for shortcuts and outsmart the system, instead of building integrity and work ethic. The disease then spread from classrooms to meeting rooms and finally to the State Palace. Why is the culture of corruption and nepotism so difficult to eradicate in this country? Because the seeds have been planted since school. The mentality of looking for loopholes and insider routes is considered intelligence, not cheating. We build a culture where having insiders is more valuable than having competencies. This is a corrupt mindset that systematically traps us in the middle- income trap. Because the country will not be able to progress if positions are filled by nephews, not by the most capable. What is the impact? This disease produces two types of defective graduates that are equally dangerous. The first type is the smart but cunning one. He may have a high GPA but it was obtained from cheating and thesis jockeying. He is good at theory but is mentally fragile when facing difficulties and lacks integrity. The second type and this is the one we see most often is the consignee. He was able to graduate and get a job not because of his brain, but because of his parents' backing or connections . His competence is poor, his work ethic is poor, but his position could be secure. So what's the cure for you personally? You have to be your own moral teacher because you can no longer rely on the system. First, do an integrity challenge on yourself. Start from small things, don't cheat. Don't leave your absence on your behalf. Don't use the connection for inappropriate purposes . Every time you choose the right path even if it is more difficult, you are building your character muscles. Second, build resilience. Don't run away from difficulties. Take on the most challenging projects. Joining an organization that forces you to work in a team with difficult people. When you fail, don't blame others. Evaluate, learn, and try again. The real world doesn't award participation trophies. Third, look for character role models. Find people around you or public figures whose integrity you admire, not just their wealth. Learn how they make decisions. Character is transmitted through real examples, not through morality textbooks. Conclusion hack your own education. So, those are the five chronic diseases that we have dissected. Let's break it down further. First, the obsession with value only creates stamp collectors. Second, the outdated curriculum is irrelevant. Third, the failure of the system to teach critical thinking. Fourth, the prestige of the major creates a skill mismatch. And fifth, character erosion that fosters a shortcut mentality. Fifth, this systemic problem is the root cause of why our demographic bonus is threatened with becoming a demographic disaster. So, what's next? Should we just give up and turn on the system? Oh, that's possible. You complain about the government, you complain about the curriculum, you complain about ministers who often change. It's so easy to become a victim. But on this channel we don't play the role of the victim, we play the role of the hacker. If the system is rotten and full of loopholes, your job isn't just to complain. Your job is to hack the system for your own benefit. How to hack it? First, make the diploma only an entry ticket, not a VIP seat. Think of your diploma as just a key to open the first door. Once the door opens, what is assessed is no longer your bachelor's degree, but the values and portfolio you can show. Build your own portfolio from now on. That's your main weapon. Second, build your own version of the independent curriculum . Don't just swallow whatever you're fed in class. The world out there has already given us the clues for the exam. AI, green economy, economics geek. You have to be proactive in learning. those skills via the internet. Remember, skills that are relevant today may be obsolete next year. So, stopping learning is the same as dying. Third, stop being a passive student. Start being the CEO of your own education. You decide what, when, and from whom to learn. You are fully responsible for your future relevance . In this era, the most successful people are not those who rank first in class or graduate from the most prestigious university. The most successful people are those who learn the fastest and most voraciously outside the classroom. Hello