‘KKN’ from Outsider’s Perspective: Dr. Brian MacHarg Garcia’s Lecture at UIII

UIII, DEPOK – The UIII’s Faculty of Education, in partnership with the American Institute for Indonesian Studies (AIFIS), hosted a public lecture on May 15, 2024, with a topic “From Student Mobilization to Service Learning: Kuliah Kerja Nyata in Indonesian Higher Education” delivered by Dr. Brian MacHarg Garcia, Director of Academic Civic Engagement at Appalachian State University, USA. 

Kuliah Kerja Nyata—KKN in short—refers to a form of student civic engagement and community service performed by Indonesian university students with a cross-scientific and sectoral approach at certain times and regions. Held by Indonesian universities specifically for undergraduate students, the implementation of KKN usually lasts between one and two months and takes place in village-level areas. 

Dr. MacHarg Garcia conducted research on KKN in early 2020 with funding support from AIFIS. Though the research coincided with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. MacHarg Garcia was firm that it is crucial to delve further into KKN as part of civic engagement and service learning. 

He began his lecture by expressing his impression of the concept of KKN, saying that it is a unique program that everyone needs to know. “My impetus for wanting to study it more was that I felt it was a story that needed to be told, particularly in the West,” he said. 

Dr. MacHarg Garcia continued by highlighting the importance of community service in higher education as he narrated a famous 19th-century story by American author Edgar Allan Poe that resonates with the issue. 

“The modality for many centuries in both Eastern and Western education was a little bit like Prince Prospero’s castle. Education was a place in which we escape within the high walls of higher education; the high walls of our campus, while outside the walls are the problems of our society,” he elaborated. 

Dr. MacHarg Garcia argued that as much as we try to escape and hide from the problems, civic engagement and service learning call us to confront them. Therefore, KKN and service learning have an important role to play in breaking the barrier between higher education and real-world problems in the community. 

“My message to any university graduate in any degree, whether it is accounting, history, music, or physics, is that you have an obligation to use your knowledge to help solve the problems of the world,” he expressed while posing a critical question: ‘How do we instill a sense of civic responsibility to the students?’ 

In his perspective, KKN poses as the answer to the above question as it teaches students to start early in actively engaging with the real-world problems. It sends a message that: “I don’t want you to solve the problem of the world now, but I want you to get some practice at it,” Dr. MacHarg Garcia highlighted, adding that KKN has followed each of 4 areas of how to teach students to be civically engaged. 

The four areas include: (1) to civically engage through everyday life so that it creates a real sense of civic responsibility; (2) it helps them to focus on what’s important to solve, demonstrating the structure of attention; (3) it creates a shared enterprise as it binds all Indonesian university students together at one place and time to promote service; and (4) it posits as a civic infrastructure as it becomes tools for Indonesian universities to provide students to engage in providing service to those in needs. 

In his conclusion, Dr. MacHarg Garcia argued that KKN can become a model to the world in teaching students to have civic responsibilities, saying that promoting it to other countries is highly recommended. 

The Faculty of Education at UIII is dedicated to training students to care for and actively solve the problems in the communities as part of their civic engagement. It has organized several student community services, especially for schools in need both nearby university and other regions.

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