Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (UMY) always seeks to benefit people, lecturers, students, and alumni of UMY. Being an international reputable university is an effort to achieve the goal.

Commenced becoming a leading university in ASEAN, on 21 January UMY got a permit to offer an online joint degree program between Master of Governmental Studies of UMY and Master of Administration of Mindanao State University, the Philippines. Students will later achieved a double degree from both universities.

Executive Director of Cooperation and International Affairs of UMY Eko Priyo Purnomo, M.Sc., M.Res., Ph.D. stated that that is an incredible achievement since UMY successfully becomes the first Indonesian university passing an online evaluation selection by Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education of the Republic of Indonesia. “This is a stepping stone for UMY since the online evaluation permit more detail than a hard copy evaluation permit,” explained Eko in an interview on Tuesday (29/1).

He added that the joint degree program is a new hope to embolden UMY alumni in the future. “One of the efforts to be an international reputable university is to become a leading university in ASEAN. Thus, the double degree program enables alumni UMY to be as capable as other ASEAN university alumni,” declared Eko.

He also informed that UMY will propose other double degree programs as Master of Nursing, Master of Hospital Management, Master of Management, Department of Governmental Studies, Department of Engineering, and Department of Accounting. UMU will also collaborates with several university to undertake the joint degree program as Universitas Utara Malaysia, Universitas Putra Malaysia, Asia University Taiwan, Khon Kaen University Thailand. “We will concern with higher education institutions which have accepted UMY students and sent their students at UMY,” he inserted.

Meanwhile, Vice Rector for Cooperation and International Affairs of UMY Prof. Dr. Achmad Nurmandi maintained that the program may evolve quality of UMY students. “We expect that the program can pioneer other double degree programs so that UMY students can be more competitive in international levels,” he hoped.