Pendahuluan: Ketika Tetangga Kecil Menjadi Pabrik Pengetahuan

Oktober 2026 memperlihatkan betapa rapuhnya hubungan Indonesia dan Singapura ketika tiga persoalan datang bersamaan: pemberitahuan tindakan pencegahan kabut asap terhadap perusahaan yang terkait dengan Indonesia, rencana MSCI menurunkan klasifikasi pasar modal Indonesia, dan pemangkasan pasokan gas pipa ke Singapura. Laporan Mothership pada 16 Oktober 2026 berjudul Grace Fu: Preventive measures notice to 7 Indonesian companies mencatat bahwa Menteri Keberlanjutan dan Lingkungan Grace Fu mengumumkan pemberitahuan kepada tujuh perusahaan di Indonesia berdasarkan Transboundary Haze Pollution Act 2014, sementara The Star pada 21 Oktober 2026 dalam laporan Prabowo vows Indonesia will not be ‘frightened’ by MSCI mengutip Presiden Prabowo Subianto bahwa Indonesia tidak takut kepada siapa pun. Di balik ketegangan diplomatik dan pasar itu terdapat lapisan yang jarang dibicarakan, yakni ketimpangan dalam memproduksi pengetahuan. Ketika krisis terjadi, analisis yang paling cepat dikutip media internasional tentang Indonesia sering lahir dari Singapura: dari ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute, dari S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), atau dari sarjana National University of Singapore (NUS). Esai di KBA13 Insight pada 25 Oktober 2026 berjudul Masa Depan Konfrontasi menuju Perang Terbuka Antara Singapura dan Indonesia membaca ketiga pemicu itu dari sudut eskalasi strategis; laporan ini memilih sudut lain, yaitu siapa yang memiliki kapasitas untuk menafsirkan, mengukur, dan menamai realitas kawasan.

Pertanyaan ini bukan pertanyaan baru. Pada tahun 2014, Hendra Gunawan, guru besar FMIPA Institut Teknologi Bandung, dalam harian Kompas berjudul Mengintip Masa Depan membandingkan anggaran pendidikan tinggi Indonesia tahun 2014 sekitar Rp3,2 triliun dengan anggaran sekitar Rp18 triliun untuk satu universitas, NUS, pada 2013. Catatan katalog arsip yang menyertai dokumen itu dengan jujur menyebut perbandingan tersebut retoris karena struktur dan cakupan anggaran berbeda, tetapi tetap efektif memperlihatkan jurang investasi riset. Pada hari yang sama, Budi Santosa, guru besar Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember, menulis di Kompas Dari “Brain Drain” ke “Brain Gain”, mengusulkan agar LPDP tidak sekadar mengirim mahasiswa ke luar negeri, tetapi juga menarik profesor dan peneliti asing ke laboratorium Indonesia. Dua belas tahun kemudian, kedua tulisan itu terasa seperti diagnosis yang belum ditindaklanjuti secara memadai. Singapura telah melangkah dari pendanaan riset S$25 miliar menjadi S$37 miliar, sementara Indonesia baru pada pertengahan 2026 mengumumkan tambahan Rp4 triliun untuk riset nasional.

Laporan ini membangun di atas esai KBA13 Insight tahun 2025 berjudul Profil Sarjana Terkenal Singapura: Politik, Ekonomi, Teknologi, Hukum, dan Sains serta biografi intelektual tahun 2026, Kishore Mahbubani: Singapore’s Diplomat-Philosopher and the Case for an Asian Century, yang menelaah pemikiran Mahbubani tentang abad Asia sambil mencatat kekosongan dalam pembacaannya tentang Islam dan dunia Muslim. Bila kedua karya itu bersifat profil dan biografi, laporan ini bergerak ke tingkat sistem. Pertanyaan pokoknya ada tiga. Pertama, apa yang sebenarnya ditunjukkan oleh basis data ilmiah global tentang kekuatan riset Singapura, dan sejauh mana angka-angka itu dapat dipercaya. Kedua, siapa sarjana terkemuka Singapura dan ke mana arah kajian mereka bergerak, terutama dalam kecerdasan buatan, semikonduktor, biomedis, iklim, serta kajian Asia Tenggara dan Indonesia. Ketiga, pelajaran dan peringatan apa yang patut ditarik Indonesia dari asimetri ini, dalam situasi ketika hubungan bilateral sedang memanas dan pengetahuan semakin menjadi instrumen kekuasaan.

Kerangka Analitis, Metode, dan Tingkat Keyakinan

Secara teoretis, laporan ini bertumpu pada tiga lapis pemikiran. Lapis pertama adalah sosiologi pengetahuan, yang memandang ilmu bukan sebagai akumulasi netral fakta, melainkan hasil dari institusi, pendanaan, jaringan, dan insentif. Lapis kedua adalah relasi pengetahuan dan kekuasaan: lembaga yang mampu mendefinisikan masalah, merancang survei, dan menerbitkan analisis cepat akan memengaruhi cara pemerintah, investor, dan publik global memahami suatu negara. Lapis ketiga, dan paling dekat dengan pengalaman intelektual kawasan ini, adalah kritik Syed Hussein Alatas terhadap captive mind dan stereotip kolonial. Pada tahun 2019, laporan Fakultas Ilmu Sosial dan Humaniora NUS berjudul Lessons from Syed Hussein Alatas mencatat bahwa Alatas adalah Kepala pertama Departemen Pengajian Melayu NUS dan penulis The Myth of the Lazy Native (1977), karya yang membongkar citra Barat tentang orang Asia Tenggara sebagai malas dan tidak beradab. Ironinya, gagasan dekolonisasi ilmu itu lahir di Singapura, negeri yang kini justru menjadi salah satu simpul paling efisien dari sistem pengetahuan global berbasis peringkat dan sitasi. Laporan ini memanfaatkan ketegangan itu sebagai lensa: Singapura menunjukkan bahwa kemandirian akademik dan integrasi global tidak harus saling meniadakan, sementara Indonesia masih bergulat untuk memiliki keduanya.

Secara metodologis, laporan ini menggunakan analisis dokumen dan data sekunder. Sumber utama meliputi siaran pers Clarivate tentang Highly Cited Researchers 2025, rilis universitas tentang daftar 2023, 2024, dan 2025, halaman resmi QS, THE, dan ShanghaiRanking sebagaimana dilaporkan universitas, halaman negara Nature Index untuk Singapura dan Indonesia, dokumen National Research Foundation (NRF), Economic Development Board (EDB), dan Kantor Perdana Menteri Singapura, profil resmi lembaga kajian dan para sarjana, serta pemberitaan media Indonesia tentang kebijakan riset 2026. Arsip digital KBA13 Academy dan esai KBA13 Insight dipakai sebagai sumber pembanding dan dokumen sejarah. Penulis juga mencoba menarik data tingkat institusi dari API terbuka OpenAlex, dengan kueri daftar institusi berkode negara SG yang diurutkan berdasarkan jumlah karya, serta pencarian institusi National University of Singapore; namun API tersebut tidak dapat diakses dari lingkungan riset yang digunakan, sehingga ukuran keluaran institusional dalam laporan ini memakai Nature Index sebagai pengganti. Keputusan ini dinyatakan terbuka agar pembaca memahami bahwa angka volume publikasi total, misalnya dari Scopus atau OpenAlex, tidak disajikan di sini.

Setiap klaim diberi tingkat keyakinan. Tingkat Tinggi diberikan pada angka yang berasal langsung dari dokumen resmi atau basis data primer, seperti anggaran RIE2030 sebesar S$37 miliar, Share Nature Index, dan jumlah peneliti dalam rilis resmi universitas. Tingkat Sedang diberikan pada perbandingan lintas basis data yang periodenya tidak identik, misalnya Nature Index Singapura untuk Juni 2025 hingga Mei 2026 dan Indonesia untuk April 2025 hingga Maret 2026, sebagaimana ditampilkan halaman masing-masing ketika diakses, serta pada tafsiran arah kajian yang disimpulkan dari publikasi dan program lembaga. Tingkat Rendah diberikan pada proyeksi skenario, yang secara inheren spekulatif. Laporan ini dengan sengaja tidak mencantumkan indeks-h atau jumlah sitasi individual sarjana, karena angka semacam itu berubah setiap hari, berbeda antarbasis data, dan mudah disalahgunakan sebagai ukuran tunggal mutu intelektual. Penanda yang dipakai adalah jabatan, karya utama, penghargaan, dan keanggotaan akademi yang dapat diperiksa pada sumber resmi.

Arsitektur Pendanaan: Dari RIE2025 ke RIE2030

Fondasi pabrik pengetahuan Singapura adalah konsistensi fiskal yang jarang ditandingi negara berkembang. Pada 15 Februari 2022, jawaban parlementer yang diterbitkan NRF berjudul Goals and Priorities Set under Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2025 Plan menegaskan alokasi S$25 miliar untuk RIE2025 dan menyebut bahwa rencana itu mempertahankan investasi riset pada kisaran satu persen PDB. Rencana itu dibagi ke dalam empat domain: manufaktur, perdagangan dan konektivitas; kesehatan dan potensi manusia; solusi perkotaan dan keberlanjutan; serta negara pintar dan ekonomi digital. Dalam perjalanannya, anggaran RIE2025 diperbesar. Laporan EDB pada 31 Agustus 2026 berjudul Singapore’s inaugural RIE2025 report card mencatat RIE2025 bernilai S$28 miliar untuk periode April 2021 hingga Maret 2026, bahwa belanja litbang sektor bisnis naik 64 persen menjadi S$9 miliar antara 2018 dan 2023, dan bahwa setiap S$1 belanja litbang publik diikuti S$1,87 belanja bisnis pada 2023, naik dari S$1,48 pada 2018. Rasio terakhir inilah yang sesungguhnya paling penting: dana publik berfungsi sebagai umpan yang menarik modal swasta, bukan sebagai pengganti.

RIE2030 menaikkan taruhan. Laporan EDB pada 5 Desember 2025 berjudul Singapore invests S$37 billion in RIE2030 research plan menyebut kenaikan 32 persen dari RIE2025, dengan S$10,8 miliar untuk empat domain, S$3 miliar untuk dua jenis program baru, yaitu RIE Flagships dan RIE Grand Challenges, 24 persen untuk riset fundamental, 20 persen untuk inovasi dan perusahaan, 17 persen untuk infrastruktur dan program baru, serta 10 persen untuk pengembangan talenta. Flagship pertama adalah semikonduktor, dipimpin A*STAR dan EDB, sedangkan Grand Challenge pertama menyasar penuaan aktif, yakni memperlambat kemunduran kognitif dan fisik warga lanjut usia. Laporan EDB Agustus 2026 menambahkan rincian bahwa paket Flagships dan Grand Challenges senilai S$3 miliar itu mencakup S$800 juta masing-masing untuk semikonduktor, transportasi dan konektivitas, serta dekarbonisasi, S$350 juta untuk umur panjang yang sehat, dan S$250 juta dana penyangga. Ada pula Research Translation Grant senilai S$300 juta untuk mempercepat hilirisasi hasil riset. Struktur ini memperlihatkan logika negara-kota: riset diarahkan pada kerentanan eksistensial, seperti ketergantungan pada rantai pasok chip, populasi menua, dan ancaman iklim terhadap pulau dataran rendah.

Bandingkan dengan Indonesia. Laporan InvestorTrust pada 29 Juni 2026 berjudul Indonesia Boosts Research Budget by $252 Million mengutip data Bank Dunia bahwa belanja litbang Indonesia sekitar 0,28 persen PDB, dibanding rata-rata dunia 2,59 persen, Malaysia 1,01 persen, dan Thailand 0,94 persen. Laporan Antara pada 15 Agustus 2026 berjudul Laying stronger footing for Indonesia’s research push menambahkan bahwa belanja riset nasional selama bertahun-tahun berkisar Rp5 hingga 7 triliun per tahun, sempat turun ke sekitar Rp3 hingga 4 triliun setelah kebijakan efisiensi anggaran 2025, lalu memperoleh tambahan Rp4 triliun yang hampir menggandakan anggaran BRIN dari titik terendahnya. Laporan yang sama mencatat bahwa mantan Kepala BRIN Laksana Tri Handoko menyebut angka ideal sekitar satu persen PDB, angka yang secara kebetulan persis setara dengan tingkat yang dipertahankan Singapura selama hampir dua dekade. Perbedaan mendasarnya bukan hanya besaran, tetapi juga prediktabilitas: Singapura menetapkan kerangka lima tahunan yang diketahui peneliti jauh hari, sementara riset Indonesia bergantung pada siklus anggaran tahunan yang dapat dipangkas mendadak, sehingga laboratorium sulit merencanakan program jangka panjang dan menarik peneliti terbaik.

Membaca Basis Data: Peringkat, Nature Index, dan Highly Cited Researchers

Peringkat universitas adalah lensa yang paling sering dikutip sekaligus paling sering disalahpahami. Dalam QS World University Rankings 2027 yang dirilis 18 Juni 2026, laporan The Straits Times yang diarsipkan NTU berjudul NUS falls to 10th place while NTU retains 12th spot mencatat NUS turun dari peringkat ke-8 ke ke-10 dunia, NTU bertahan di peringkat ke-12, Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) melonjak 253 tingkat ke peringkat 266, dan Singapore Management University (SMU) naik ke peringkat 411. Dalam Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2027, laporan Fakultas Komputasi NUS pada 1 Oktober 2026 berjudul NUS reaches highest-ever position at 15th menyebut NUS mencapai posisi tertinggi sepanjang sejarahnya di peringkat ke-15 dari 2.297 institusi, sedangkan laporan NTU pada 14 Oktober 2026 berjudul NTU Singapore rises to 28th mencatat kenaikan tiga tingkat ke posisi ke-28. ARWU memberikan gambaran yang lebih sederhana: halaman institusi ShanghaiRanking untuk National University of Singapore menampilkan peringkat ke-56 untuk 2025, sementara halaman Nanyang Technological University menampilkan peringkat ke-84 untuk 2026.

Data ARWU menyimpan petunjuk yang menarik. Pada halaman ShanghaiRanking untuk NUS, skor indikator Alumni dan Award, yaitu alumni dan staf peraih Nobel atau Medali Fields, sama-sama tercatat 0,0, sedangkan skor publikasi mencapai 64,5 dan skor peneliti bersitasi tinggi 43,6. Artinya, kekuatan Singapura bersumber dari volume dan mutu publikasi kontemporer, bukan dari warisan penghargaan sains tertinggi. Kekosongan itu sebagian diisi dengan merekrut. Pada 5 April 2019, NUS News dalam laporan Nobel laureate Konstantin Novoselov joins NUS mengumumkan bahwa peraih Nobel Fisika 2010 untuk riset grafena itu bergabung sebagai Distinguished Professor, peraih Nobel pertama yang menjadi staf universitas Singapura. Strategi impor talenta tingkat puncak semacam ini, berpadu dengan pembinaan sarjana lokal, adalah ciri khas sistem Singapura yang perlu dicermati tanpa romantisasi.

Nature Index memberikan ukuran yang lebih ketat karena hanya menghitung artikel di sekelompok jurnal ilmu alam dan kesehatan terpilih. Halaman Nature Index untuk Singapura periode 1 Juni 2025 hingga 30 Mei 2026 mencatat 2.488 artikel dengan Share 914,78, menempatkan Singapura di posisi ke-16 dunia dan ke-6 Asia Pasifik. NUS menyumbang Share 426,79, NTU 317,41, dan A*STAR 89,00. Keunggulan terbesar ada pada ilmu terapan, dengan posisi ke-14 dunia, dan kimia, juga ke-14 dunia. Sebagai pembanding, halaman Nature Index untuk Indonesia periode 1 April 2025 hingga 31 Maret 2026 mencatat 205 artikel dengan Share 50,06 dan posisi ke-47 dunia, dengan BRIN di urutan pertama nasional pada Share 7,57, diikuti Universitas Indonesia 5,26, ITB 4,80, dan UGM 4,61. Dengan kata lain, Share NUS seorang diri sekitar delapan setengah kali Share seluruh Indonesia, meskipun periode kedua halaman itu tidak persis sama.

Daftar Highly Cited Researchers dari Clarivate memperlihatkan dinamika yang lebih halus. Siaran pers NTU pada 15 November 2023 berjudul NTU is 22nd globally and first locally with most highly cited researchers mencatat 42 peneliti NTU dengan 44 penyebutan, terbanyak di Singapura untuk tahun keenam berturut-turut. Rilis NTU pada 19 November 2024 berjudul NTU Singapore scientists named among most influential researchers in the world mencatat 36 peneliti, dan rilis 12 November 2025 berjudul NTU Singapore scientists named among world’s most influential researchers mencatat 33 peneliti dengan 36 penyebutan. Sebaliknya, NUS News pada 12 November 2025 dalam laporan NUS academics recognised among world’s leading scientists mencatat 37 peneliti NUS, sedangkan pada daftar 2022 jumlahnya lebih dari 30 menurut rilis NUS News 15 November 2022. Penurunan NTU perlu dibaca bersama perubahan metodologi Clarivate: siaran pers Clarivate Announces Highly Cited Researchers 2025 List menyebut 432 calon penghargaan dikeluarkan karena publikasi hiperprolifik serta penyaringan baru terhadap sitasi diri berlebihan. Pada skala sepuluh tahun, analisis Clarivate yang dilaporkan Infodocket pada 26 Februari 2026 mencatat bahwa jumlah penghargaan untuk Singapura naik empat kali lipat antara 2015 dan 2025.

Ekosistem Lembaga Kajian dan Pola Pintu Putar

Bila universitas adalah mesin produksi sains, lembaga kajian adalah ruang kendali tafsir. Singapura memiliki ekosistem yang padat untuk ukuran negerinya. Halaman Our History and Mission ISEAS mencatat bahwa parlemen mengesahkan Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Act pada 7 Juni 1968, dan lembaga ini berganti nama menjadi ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute pada Agustus 2015; programnya mencakup ASEAN Studies Centre, Singapore APEC Study Centre, studi ekonomi, sosial-budaya, dan politik-strategis kawasan, program negara untuk Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Filipina, Thailand, dan Vietnam, serta program perubahan iklim dan media-teknologi. Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), menurut halaman About Us, didirikan pada 1988 sebagai lembaga kajian independen, bergabung dengan Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy pada 2008 sebagai pusat riset otonom, dan pada 2026 menjadi lembaga riset otonom tingkat universitas. East Asian Institute, menurut halaman Profile and Objectives, berdiri pada April 1997 sebagai penerus lembaga yang dirintis Goh Keng Swee pada 1983 untuk mengkaji Konfusianisme, kini berfokus pada Tiongkok, Jepang, dan Semenanjung Korea. Asia Research Institute NUS berkiprah sejak 2001 menurut halaman About ARI, sedangkan Middle East Institute NUS berdiri pada 2007 menurut halaman About MEI.

Di NTU, RSIS menyebut dirinya sekolah pascasarjana global dan lembaga kajian strategis. Halaman About RSIS mendaftar lima pusat riset, yaitu Centre for Multilateralism Studies, Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, Centre of Excellence for National Security, Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, dan International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, ditambah program studi keamanan nasional, kohesi sosial, dan hubungan antaragama. Pola kepemimpinannya memperlihatkan apa yang dapat disebut pintu putar terkelola. Pengumuman RSIS pada 3 November 2014 berjudul Leadership Transition at RSIS menyebut Duta Besar Ong Keng Yong menjadi Wakil Ketua Eksekutif, menggantikan Duta Besar Barry Desker, sementara akademisi Joseph Liow menjadi Dekan. Di ISEAS, halaman About Us mencatat bahwa Ng Chee Khern diangkat sebagai Direktur dan CEO pada 1 April 2026; ia sebelumnya Sekretaris Tetap Kementerian Tenaga Kerja (2022–2025), Sekretaris Tetap untuk Smart Nation dan Pemerintahan Digital (2017–2022), dan Kepala Angkatan Udara Singapura (2006–2009).

Pola itu juga terlihat pada figur publik terpenting dari ilmu kebijakan Singapura. Halaman Distinguished Fellow ARI mencatat bahwa Kishore Mahbubani bertugas di dinas luar negeri Singapura selama 33 tahun (1971–2004), dua kali menjadi Duta Besar untuk PBB, Sekretaris Tetap Kementerian Luar Negeri (1993–1998), lalu Dekan pendiri Lee Kuan Yew School (2004–2017) sebelum menjadi Distinguished Fellow ARI sejak 1 Juli 2019. Dalam tradisi Indonesia, perpindahan dari birokrasi ke akademia sering dicurigai sebagai politisasi ilmu; dalam tradisi Singapura, ia dianggap sebagai cara memindahkan pengalaman negara ke dalam ruang refleksi, dan sebaliknya membawa analisis akademik ke meja kebijakan. Konsekuensinya ganda. Di satu sisi, lembaga kajian Singapura memiliki akses, kecepatan, dan kepekaan kebijakan yang tinggi. Di sisi lain, batas antara analisis independen dan kepentingan negara menjadi kabur, sehingga pembaca Indonesia perlu membaca produk mereka sebagai pengetahuan yang berharga sekaligus sebagai bagian dari perangkat diplomasi negara kecil. Buku tahun 2025 karya Kamaruzzaman Bustamam Ahmad dan Fitri Zulfidar Ibrahim, Intelligence as Statecraft: Singapore’s Strategic Transformation in the Indo-Pacific, menyebut logika ini sebagai fusi kognisi manusia dan digital lintas institusi militer, sipil, dan akademik, dengan tesis bahwa koordinasi, bukan ukuran, yang menentukan kekuatan.

Sarjana Ilmu Sosial dan Humaniora: Dari Wang Gungwu hingga Teo You Yenn

Di puncak tradisi humaniora Singapura berdiri Wang Gungwu. Pada 22 Juni 2020, laporan NUS berjudul Eminent NUS historian Professor Wang Gungwu receives prestigious Tang Prize mencatat bahwa ia menerima Tang Prize in Sinology 2020 atas kajiannya tentang tatanan dunia Tionghoa, diaspora, dan migrasi Tionghoa; ia menjabat University Professor NUS sejak 2007, Direktur East Asian Institute 1997–2007, Wakil Rektor University of Hong Kong 1986–1995, dan anggota kehormatan American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Keistimewaan Wang terletak pada sudut pandangnya: ia membaca Tiongkok dari selatan, melalui hubungannya dengan Asia Tenggara, bukan dari dalam atau dari Barat. Di sosiologi, Chua Beng Huat menempati posisi serupa. NUS Press pada 2017 menerbitkan Liberalism Disavowed: Communitarianism and State Capitalism in Singapore, yang menganalisis bagaimana Partai Aksi Rakyat membangun ideologi komunitarian melalui perumahan publik, multirasialisme, dan kapitalisme negara; halaman ARI juga mencatat Chua memimpin klaster Kajian Budaya di Asia dari 2000 hingga 2015. Keduanya memperlihatkan bahwa sarjana Singapura terbaik tidak sekadar memuji negaranya, tetapi menganalisisnya secara kritis dari dalam.

Warisan Alatas berlanjut melalui putranya. Entri Syed Farid Alatas mencatat bahwa ia mengajar di Departemen Sosiologi NUS sejak 1992 dan menulis Alternative Discourses in Asian Social Science: Responses to Eurocentrism (2006) serta Applying Ibn Khaldun: The Recovery of a Lost Tradition in Sociology (2014). Proyek ayah dan anak ini, yakni membangun ilmu sosial yang otonom dan menghidupkan kembali Ibn Khaldun sebagai teoretikus sosial, sangat relevan bagi perguruan tinggi Islam Indonesia, termasuk jaringan UIN, karena menawarkan jembatan antara warisan intelektual Islam dan ilmu sosial modern tanpa jatuh pada apologetika. Buku tahun 2026 Islam di Dunia Melayu dan Samudera Hindia menempatkan Syed Hussein Alatas di antara sarjana yang diajak berdialog dalam merumuskan kawasan Melayu–Samudra Hindia sebagai medan epistemik. Di bidang sejarah dan kepemimpinan akademik, Tan Tai Yong menjadi contoh sejarawan yang memimpin institusi. Pengumuman SUSS pada 19 Juli 2022 berjudul SUSS appoints Humanities Professor Tan Tai Yong as President mencatat ia menjabat Presiden Singapore University of Social Sciences sejak 1 Januari 2023 setelah memimpin Yale-NUS College, dengan karya antara lain Singapore: Seven Hundred Years (2019) dan Creating Greater Malaysia (2008).

Ilmu kebijakan dan hubungan internasional melahirkan figur yang paling dikenal publik. Selain Mahbubani, Danny Quah adalah ekonom dengan reputasi global. Profil resmi Danny Quah di LKY School mencatat ia adalah Li Ka Shing Professor in Economics, Direktur Asia Competitiveness Institute, Dekan 2018–2025, dan sebelumnya Kepala Departemen Ekonomi London School of Economics; minat terkininya meliputi economic statecraft dan masa depan multilateralisme. Joseph Liow, menurut laporan NTU pada 10 Oktober 2025 berjudul New dean for Lee Kuan Yew School, berpindah ke NUS sebagai Dekan LKY School setelah 28 tahun di NTU, termasuk sebagai dekan RSIS dan dekan College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences; ia juga Ketua MEI. Di bidang keamanan, pengumuman RSIS pada 23 Desember 2025 berjudul Re-appointment of Dean in RSIS mencatat Kumar Ramakrishna diangkat kembali sebagai Dekan untuk tiga tahun mulai 1 Januari 2026; ia adalah pendiri Centre of Excellence for National Security dan penulis Jemaah Islamiyah, ISIS and Beyond yang terbit Juli 2025. Bagi Indonesia, karya Ramakrishna penting karena kajian terorisme di Asia Tenggara sangat bergantung pada data dan narasi tentang kelompok yang berakar di Indonesia.

Generasi berikutnya memperlihatkan arah kritis yang lebih tajam. Teo You Yenn, menurut CV yang ia publikasikan April 2026, adalah Provost’s Chair in Sociology dan Direktur Centre for the Study of Social Inequality di NTU, penulis This Is What Inequality Looks Like (2018) yang telah terbit pula di Taiwan dan Tiongkok, serta Unease: Life in Singapore Families (2026). Terence Chong, menurut profil ISEAS, adalah Wakil CEO dan Direktur Senior Divisi Riset ISEAS, dengan kajian tentang kelas menengah, Kristen Pentakosta, dan migran Tionghoa baru di negara-negara CLMV. Leo Suryadinata, sarjana kelahiran Jakarta, menurut laporan RSIS pada 6 Oktober 2018 berjudul Indonesia honours S’porean for work on ethnic Chinese, menjadi warga Singapura pertama yang menerima penghargaan kebudayaan dari Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan Indonesia atas kajiannya tentang komunitas Tionghoa Indonesia. Kenneth Paul Tan menunjukkan sisi lain dari sistem ini. Halaman Hong Kong Baptist University mencatat ia mantan Wakil Dekan LKY School yang pindah ke HKBU pada Februari 2021, penulis Singapore: Identity, Brand, Power (2018). Kepergiannya mengingatkan bahwa ekosistem yang efisien tidak selalu menjadi rumah yang nyaman bagi semua suara kritis.

Ilmuwan Sains, Teknologi, dan Biomedis

Di bidang sains dan teknologi, penanda paling jelas adalah penghargaan nasional dan keanggotaan akademi internasional. Laporan BioSpectrum Asia pada 3 Oktober 2025 berjudul Singapore honors excellence at the 2025 President’s Science and Technology Awards mencatat bahwa Presiden NUS Tan Eng Chye menerima President’s Science and Technology Medal, Lim Chwee Teck dan Lisa Ng menerima President’s Science Award, dan Andy Tay menerima Young Scientist Award. Lim Chwee Teck patut disorot. Halaman profil resmi di Departemen Teknik Biomedis NUS mencatat ia Distinguished Professor dan Direktur Institute for Health Innovation and Technology (iHealthtech), Fellow Royal Society pada 2024, International Fellow Royal Academy of Engineering pada 2025, anggota internasional US National Academy of Engineering pada 2026, serta salah satu pendiri sejumlah perusahaan rintisan, termasuk Biolidics. Riset mekanobiologi penyakit, mikrofluida biomedis, dan teknologi wearable yang ia tekuni memperlihatkan model ilmuwan Singapura generasi ini: berkarya di jurnal terkemuka sekaligus mendirikan perusahaan.

Kepemimpinan universitas di Singapura juga dipegang ilmuwan dengan reputasi internasional. Rilis NTU pada 8 Februari 2023 berjudul Professor Ho Teck Hua appointed president of NTU mencatat ia menjadi presiden kelima NTU mulai 24 April 2023 setelah menjabat Senior Deputy President dan Provost NUS sejak 2018, dengan bidang ilmu perilaku dan ekonomi perilaku. Pendahulunya, Subra Suresh, menurut entri Subra Suresh, memimpin NTU pada 2018–2022 setelah menjadi Direktur National Science Foundation Amerika Serikat dan Presiden Carnegie Mellon University, serta menerima National Medal of Science pada 2023. Di A*STAR, Jackie Ying menjadi simbol yang menarik bagi dunia Muslim. Laporan Princeton Engineering pada 19 Februari 2016 berjudul Jackie Ying receives Mustafa Prize and is named AAAS Fellow mencatat bahwa ia, sebagai Direktur Eksekutif Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology A*STAR, menerima Mustafa Prize 2015, penghargaan sains yang disebut tertinggi di dunia Islam, atas riset sistem penghantar obat dan nanopartikel yang mengatur pelepasan insulin.

Daftar Highly Cited Researchers 2025 memetakan siapa yang membentuk arus riset global dari Singapura. Di NUS, menurut laporan NUS News yang telah dikutip, nama-nama itu mencakup Konstantin Novoselov dan Antonio Castro Neto dalam fisika, Liu Bin dan Yan Ning dalam kimia, Jochen Wirtz dalam ekonomi dan bisnis, Thomas Yeo dalam neurosains, serta Yan Shuicheng dalam rekayasa. Laporan Fakultas Komputasi NUS pada 14 November 2025 berjudul Two NUS Computing Professors Among the World’s Most Highly Cited Researchers 2025 menyebut Yan Shuicheng dan Zhang Yang sebagai penggerak riset kecerdasan buatan dan biologi komputasi. Di NTU, rilis 2025 menyebut Joseph Sung, Dekan Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine; Lee Pooi See; Warren Chan; Pu Kanyi, yang diakui di tiga bidang sekaligus dan termasuk satu dari 31 ilmuwan dunia dengan capaian itu; serta Yuen Chau dalam ilmu komputer dan rekayasa. Komposisi ini menunjukkan dua hal. Pertama, keunggulan Singapura terkonsentrasi pada material, kimia, energi, dan rekayasa. Kedua, banyak di antara bintangnya adalah ilmuwan kelahiran luar negeri, sehingga daya tarik institusional, bukan semata talenta lokal, menjadi variabel penentu.

Arah Kajian Menuju 2030

Arah kajian Singapura dapat dibaca dari tiga sumber yang saling menguatkan: prioritas pendanaan, profil subjek dalam basis data, dan agenda lembaga kajian. Dari sisi pendanaan, RIE2030 menempatkan semikonduktor, kecerdasan buatan, teknologi kuantum, kepercayaan digital, biomanufaktur, kesehatan presisi, penuaan aktif, ketahanan iklim, dan transisi rendah karbon sebagai pusat gravitasi. Dalam pidato peluncurannya pada 5 Desember 2025 yang dimuat Kantor Perdana Menteri dengan judul SM Lee Hsien Loong at the Press Conference on the Launch of RIE2030, Menteri Senior Lee Hsien Loong menyebut tujuan Flagship semikonduktor adalah menjadikan Singapura simpul litbang yang penting secara strategis dalam industri itu. Dari sisi basis data, rincian subjek pada halaman NTU tentang University Rankings menunjukkan NTU berada di peringkat ke-4 dunia untuk Data Science dan AI serta Teknik Elektro dan Elektronika dalam QS by Subject 2026, sedangkan halaman ShanghaiRanking menampilkan NUS di peringkat pertama dunia untuk Geografi dan ke-6 untuk Nanosains dan Nanoteknologi. Pola ini mengonfirmasi bahwa Singapura membangun keunggulan di persimpangan teknologi keras dan kebutuhan negara.

Di bidang ilmu sosial, arah kajian bergerak pada empat poros. Poros pertama adalah persaingan kekuatan besar dan tatanan internasional, sebagaimana tampak dari tema Regional Outlook Forum ISEAS pada 8 Januari 2026, Confronting Chaos: The Future of International Order in Southeast Asia, dan minat Danny Quah pada economic statecraft. Poros kedua adalah keamanan nasional dan kohesi sosial, terutama di RSIS dengan program kontra-terorisme, keamanan siber, dan hubungan antaragama. Poros ketiga adalah ketimpangan, penuaan, dan keluarga, seperti tampak pada agenda IPS dan karya Teo You Yenn. Poros keempat, dan paling relevan bagi pembaca Indonesia, adalah kajian negara-negara tetangga, terutama Indonesia, yang dikelola melalui program negara di ISEAS dan program Indonesia di RSIS. Arah ini konsisten dengan logika negara kecil: memahami kekuatan besar agar dapat menavigasi, memahami masyarakat sendiri agar tetap kohesif, dan memahami tetangga agar tidak terkejut.

Dimensi iklim dan keberlanjutan menjadi titik temu antara sains dan ilmu sosial. Di sisi sains, Nature Index mencatat Singapura di posisi ke-26 dunia untuk ilmu bumi dan lingkungan, lebih rendah dari keunggulannya di kimia dan ilmu terapan, sehingga RIE2030 menambah dana S$800 juta untuk dekarbonisasi. Di sisi ilmu sosial, ISEAS memiliki program Climate Change in Southeast Asia yang, menurut catatan ISEAS pada 3 September 2026, dikoordinasikan Principal Fellow Sharon Seah. Bagi Indonesia, poros ini sensitif, karena kabut asap lintas batas, perusahaan perkebunan, dan Transboundary Haze Pollution Act berada tepat di persimpangannya. Kajian KBA13 Insight pada 20 Oktober 2026 tentang kebakaran 2026 dan jejaring korporasi terkait Singapura dan Malaysia, berjudul Beyond the Smoke, menekankan celah akuntabilitas regional. Ketika riset iklim Singapura makin canggih, kemampuan menghasilkan data independen tentang kebakaran, kepemilikan lahan, dan rantai pasok dari sisi Indonesia menjadi syarat agar perdebatan tidak didominasi satu pihak.

Indonesia sebagai Objek Kajian: Survei, Program, dan Narasi

Hampir tidak ada negara yang dikaji seintensif Indonesia oleh lembaga-lembaga Singapura. Profil Julia Lau mencatat bahwa ia Principal Fellow dan Koordinator Indonesia Studies Programme ISEAS, dengan proyek tentang politik domestik Indonesia, ibu kota Nusantara, dan politik luar negeri Indonesia sebagai kekuatan menengah. Profil Siwage Dharma Negara pada Regional Outlook Forum 2026 menyebutnya Senior Fellow dan Ko-koordinator program yang sama, dengan fokus makroekonomi, industri, dan perdagangan Indonesia. Di RSIS, profil Alexander Raymond Arifianto mencatat ia Senior Fellow dan Koordinator Program Indonesia di IDSS, dengan laporan kebijakan 2025 tentang politik luar negeri Indonesia di bawah Prabowo dan Islam politik pada masa kepresidenan Prabowo. Esai KBA13 Insight tahun 2024 berjudul Relasi Indonesia–Singapura: Interdependensi Ekonomi, Politik Keamanan, dan Dinamika Strategis ASEAN menyediakan latar strategis bagi intensitas perhatian ini.

Instrumen paling berpengaruh adalah survei. ISEAS menerbitkan The Indonesia National Survey Project pada 2017 dan 2022; halaman toko buku ISEAS tentang The Indonesia National Survey Project 2022 mencatat penulisnya Burhanuddin Muhtadi, Hui Yew-Foong, dan Siwage Dharma Negara, dengan temuan tentang persetujuan publik terhadap Presiden Joko Widodo sekitar 71,8 persen sebelum pemotongan subsidi BBM September 2022, pandangan yang lebih negatif terhadap kebangkitan Tiongkok dibanding 2017, dan kekaguman pada Arab Saudi, Turki, dan Singapura. Burhanuddin Muhtadi sendiri, menurut profil ISEAS, adalah guru besar ilmu politik UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta, direktur eksekutif Indikator Politik Indonesia, dan Visiting Fellow ISEAS. Di tingkat kawasan, ISEAS Perspective 2026/65 karya Melinda Martinus pada 10 September 2026 berjudul Indonesia’s Strategic Preferences amid Great-Power Competition mengolah survei State of Southeast Asia 2026 dengan 2.008 responden, 236 di antaranya dari Indonesia; ketika dipaksa memilih, 80,1 persen responden Indonesia menyatakan ASEAN sebaiknya berpihak pada Tiongkok dan hanya 17,3 persen yang mempercayai Amerika Serikat, terendah sejak survei dimulai pada 2019.

Fakta-fakta itu menyimpan paradoks. Sarjana Indonesia hadir dan berperan penting di lembaga-lembaga Singapura, tetapi kerangka pertanyaan, pembiayaan, dan saluran publikasi sebagian besar ditentukan dari Singapura. Survei State of Southeast Asia, misalnya, hanya melibatkan 236 responden Indonesia, sehingga hasilnya perlu dibaca dengan memperhatikan ukuran dan komposisi sampel; Martinus sendiri menafsirkan pergeseran Indonesia sebagai menurunnya kepercayaan pada kebijakan Amerika, bukan penyelarasan dengan Beijing. Namun begitu angka-angka itu dikutip media global, nuansa metodologis sering hilang. Dalam situasi Oktober 2026, ketika isu kabut asap dan MSCI memanas, analisis tentang Indonesia yang paling cepat beredar secara internasional kembali bersumber dari Singapura. Esai KBA13 Insight tahun 2025 berjudul Kekuatan Intelijen Singapura: Struktur, Aliansi, dan Teknologi 10 Tahun Terakhir dan buku Memotret Wajah Singapore Inc. di Indonesia (2025) menempatkan fenomena ini dalam bingkai lebih luas tentang kapital, diplomasi, dan ekonomi informasi. Asimetri ini bukan konspirasi, tetapi hasil logis dari investasi yang berbeda selama setengah abad.

Asimetri dalam Angka: Perbandingan Terverifikasi

Tabel berikut merangkum indikator yang dapat diverifikasi dari sumber yang dikutip dalam laporan ini. Tabel ini sengaja tidak memasukkan jumlah total publikasi atau sitasi negara, karena data OpenAlex tidak dapat diakses dalam penelitian ini dan angka Scopus tidak tersedia dari sumber terbuka yang diperiksa. Kolom catatan menyebut periode atau edisi masing-masing angka, sehingga pembaca dapat menilai sendiri derajat keterbandingannya. Hal terpenting dari tabel ini bukan selisih absolut, yang sebagian wajar mengingat perbedaan tingkat pendapatan, melainkan selisih relatif terhadap ukuran negara. Indonesia adalah negara kepulauan dengan penduduk berlipat-lipat lebih besar, tetapi Share Nature Index-nya kurang dari seperenam belas Share Singapura. Ketimpangan ini juga tampak dalam peringkat universitas: universitas terbaik Indonesia dalam QS 2027 berada di peringkat 191, sedangkan dalam THE 2027, menurut laporan RCTI+ pada 30 September 2026 berjudul 42 Universitas Terbaik Indonesia Masuk Peringkat THE WUR 2027, Universitas Indonesia berada di kelompok 651–700, sementara UGM dan UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta berada di kelompok 801–1000.

Membaca tabel itu dengan jujur menuntut dua kehati-hatian. Kehati-hatian pertama menyangkut ukuran: Nature Index sangat bias terhadap ilmu alam dan jurnal elite, sehingga tidak menangkap kekuatan riset Indonesia dalam bidang seperti kajian Islam, antropologi lokal, atau ilmu pertanian terapan yang banyak terbit di jurnal nasional. Kehati-hatian kedua menyangkut kecenderungan: data Nature Index Indonesia menunjukkan bahwa BRIN, setelah konsolidasi LIPI, BATAN, LAPAN, BPPT, dan Lembaga Eijkman, kini menjadi institusi terdepan, yang berarti konsolidasi kelembagaan mulai memberi hasil statistik meskipun dengan biaya transisi yang besar. Pada tahun 2020, Asep Bayu Dani Nandiyanto dan rekan dalam Indonesian Journal of Science and Technology berjudul How bibliographic dataset portrays decreasing number of scientific publication from Indonesia menunjukkan bahwa pertumbuhan publikasi Indonesia di Scopus sepanjang 2014–2019 banyak digerakkan artikel jurnal dan makalah konferensi, lalu menurun pada 2018–2019. Pelajaran dari Singapura adalah bahwa volume tanpa konsentrasi pada mutu dan bidang strategis tidak menghasilkan pengaruh. Di sisi lain, LPDP dengan dana abadi Rp180,8 triliun sesungguhnya memiliki modal yang besar untuk mengubah pola ini, asalkan diarahkan pada pembangunan kelompok riset di dalam negeri, bukan hanya pengiriman individu ke luar negeri.

Kata Para Pemimpin

Pernyataan para pemimpin memperlihatkan bagaimana kedua negara membingkai riset. Dalam pidato peluncuran RIE2030 pada 5 Desember 2025 yang dimuat Kantor Perdana Menteri Singapura, Lee Hsien Loong menjelaskan logika eksistensial di balik investasi itu dengan kalimat bahwa Singapura “resource-disadvantaged, so all the more we need advanced science and tech capabilities”. Ia juga menegaskan bahwa “a critical success factor is high-quality talent” dan bahwa negaranya “will be investing $37 billion over the next five years in R&D”, sekitar satu persen PDB, tingkat yang dipertahankan hampir dua puluh tahun. Laporan EDB tentang RIE2030 mengutip Tan Chorh Chuan bahwa minat terhadap litbang Singapura justru tumbuh, dan bahwa terobosan yang benar-benar menggerakkan perubahan “often has to come from very novel areas of science and application”. Di tingkat universitas, laporan Fakultas Komputasi NUS tentang THE 2027 mengutip Presiden NUS Tan Eng Chye: “This is not a one-off result. It reflects intentional, sustained effort over many years.” Kata kunci yang berulang dalam pernyataan-pernyataan itu adalah konsistensi, talenta, dan keterbatasan sumber daya alam sebagai alasan untuk berinvestasi pada pengetahuan.

Di Indonesia, bahasa yang dipakai berbeda tetapi menunjukkan kesadaran yang tumbuh. Laporan Sekretariat Kabinet tentang pembukaan Sarasehan Kebangsaan KSTI 2026 pada 26 Juni 2026, yang dihadiri lebih dari 2.600 peserta menurut Menteri Pendidikan Tinggi, Sains, dan Teknologi Brian Yuliarto, mengutip Presiden Prabowo Subianto: “Saya selalu berpendapat bahwa para guru besar adalah orang-orang yang terpintar dari sebuah negara.” Presiden juga menyatakan bahwa potensi dan kemampuan kampus “memang harus dimanfaatkan atau digerakan”. Laporan RCTI+ pada 28 Juni 2026 berjudul Mensesneg Ungkap Prabowo Tambah Anggaran Riset Rp4 Triliun mengutip Menteri Sekretaris Negara Prasetyo Hadi bahwa anggaran riset ditambah “sampai di angka Rp4 triliun” dan bahwa “semua harus dalam satu grand design”. Perbandingan kedua kumpulan pernyataan ini instruktif. Singapura berbicara dalam bahasa kesinambungan dua dekade dan angka lima tahunan yang terkunci; Indonesia berbicara dalam bahasa penghargaan, mobilisasi, dan desain besar yang baru akan disusun. Ujian sesungguhnya bagi Indonesia adalah apakah desain besar itu bertahan melampaui satu siklus anggaran dan satu periode pemerintahan.

Argumen Tandingan

Setidaknya ada empat keberatan serius terhadap pembacaan dalam laporan ini. Keberatan pertama menyatakan bahwa peringkat dan basis data bibliometrik adalah konstruksi komersial yang bias terhadap bahasa Inggris, ilmu alam, dan institusi kaya, sehingga tidak layak dijadikan ukuran kemajuan ilmu. Keberatan ini sah. Peringkat NUS bisa turun dari 8 ke 10 dalam QS dan naik ke 15 dalam THE pada tahun yang sama, menunjukkan sensitivitas terhadap metodologi. Clarivate sendiri mengeluarkan ratusan calon penghargaan karena pola publikasi dan sitasi yang tidak wajar. Namun justru karena itulah laporan ini memakai beberapa basis data sekaligus dan menghindari angka individual. Ketika QS, THE, ARWU, Nature Index, dan Highly Cited Researchers menunjukkan arah yang sama, kesimpulan tentang besarnya jurang menjadi kuat meskipun angka pastinya tetap dapat diperdebatkan. Keberatan kedua menyatakan bahwa membandingkan negara-kota kaya dengan negara kepulauan berpenduduk ratusan juta tidak adil. Laporan ini setuju bahwa perbandingan absolut menyesatkan; karena itu yang ditekankan adalah pola, yakni konsistensi pendanaan, konsentrasi institusional, dan hubungan lembaga kajian dengan negara, yang dapat dipelajari tanpa harus meniru skala.

Keberatan ketiga menyatakan bahwa keunggulan Singapura sebagian bersifat impor: banyak peneliti bersitasi tinggi adalah ilmuwan kelahiran luar negeri, dan kekuatan itu dapat menguap bila lingkungan geopolitik atau kebijakan imigrasi berubah. Data NTU yang turun dari 42 ke 33 peneliti dalam tiga tahun memberi sedikit dukungan bagi argumen ini, meskipun perubahan metodologi Clarivate juga berperan. Kepindahan Kenneth Paul Tan ke Hong Kong menunjukkan bahwa sistem yang sangat terkelola dapat kehilangan suara-suara kritisnya. Keberatan keempat menyatakan bahwa kedekatan lembaga kajian dengan negara justru melemahkan kredibilitas mereka, sehingga Indonesia tidak perlu khawatir terhadap dominasi tafsir Singapura. Keberatan ini lemah. Kredibilitas internasional ISEAS dan RSIS terbukti dari seberapa sering mereka dikutip media global dan diundang ke forum kebijakan, dan kualitas sarjana seperti Wang Gungwu, Chua Beng Huat, atau Teo You Yenn tidak berkurang karena kedekatan institusional. Lebih jauh, sarjana Indonesia sendiri ikut menjadi bagian dari produksi pengetahuan itu. Karena itu respons yang tepat bukan menolak pengetahuan dari Singapura, melainkan membangun kapasitas yang setara untuk berdialog, menguji, dan bila perlu membantahnya dengan data.

Skenario Keseimbangan Pengetahuan hingga 2030

Empat skenario disusun berdasarkan dua variabel penggerak: konsistensi pendanaan riset Indonesia, apakah tetap di kisaran 0,3 persen PDB atau bergerak menuju satu persen, dan arah hubungan bilateral, apakah tetap kooperatif atau mengalami sekuritisasi pascakrisis Oktober 2026. Skenario pertama, asimetri melebar, terjadi bila Singapura menjalankan RIE2030 sesuai rencana sementara Indonesia kembali pada pola anggaran tahunan yang mudah dipangkas; jurang Nature Index dan peringkat melebar, dan tafsir internasional tentang Indonesia tetap bersumber dari luar. Skenario kedua, pengejaran selektif, terjadi bila tambahan Rp4 triliun menjadi lantai baru, LPDP mengarahkan dana abadi penelitian pada kelompok riset domestik, dan BRIN bersama universitas membangun tiga atau empat bidang unggulan, misalnya biodiversitas, kebencanaan, energi, dan kajian Islam Asia Tenggara. Skenario ketiga, sekuritisasi pengetahuan, terjadi bila ketegangan diplomatik merembes ke kerja sama akademik, misalnya pembatasan akses data, kecurigaan terhadap peneliti asing, atau pembekuan program bersama, sehingga kedua pihak rugi. Skenario keempat, konvergensi kolaboratif, terjadi bila kedua negara membangun lembaga riset bersama dan survei yang dirancang bersama, sehingga Indonesia menjadi ko-produsen, bukan sekadar objek, kajian kawasan.

Skenario asimetri melebar diberi bobot tertinggi karena didukung data historis: belanja litbang Indonesia bertahan di sekitar 0,28 hingga 0,3 persen PDB selama bertahun-tahun, dan pemangkasan 2025 menunjukkan betapa rapuhnya komitmen tahunan. Skenario pengejaran selektif cukup kuat karena terdapat sinyal politik baru: kehadiran Presiden dalam KSTI 2026, tambahan Rp4 triliun, dan dana abadi LPDP yang besar. Indikator peringatan dini untuk membedakan kedua skenario itu dapat dipantau setiap tahun, yakni apakah anggaran riset 2027 dan 2028 sekurang-kurangnya mempertahankan tambahan 2026, apakah Share Nature Index Indonesia bergerak di atas 60, apakah ada universitas Indonesia yang memasuki 150 besar QS, dan apakah muncul lembaga kajian Indonesia yang secara rutin menerbitkan analisis tentang Singapura dan Malaysia dengan standar internasional. Skenario sekuritisasi tidak boleh diremehkan. Krisis kabut asap, MSCI, dan gas pada Oktober 2026 menunjukkan bahwa sentimen publik dapat berubah cepat, dan sejarah hubungan kedua negara, dari peristiwa MacDonald House 1965 hingga polemik penamaan KRI Usman Harun 2014, memperlihatkan bahwa memori kolektif mudah dibangkitkan. Skenario konvergensi kolaboratif paling diinginkan, tetapi saat ini paling kecil kemungkinannya karena membutuhkan kepercayaan politik yang sedang menipis.

Rekomendasi bagi Aktor Indonesia

Kepada Kementerian Pendidikan Tinggi, Sains, dan Teknologi, rekomendasi utama adalah mengunci kerangka pendanaan riset lima tahunan yang tidak dapat dipangkas di tengah jalan, meniru disiplin RIE tanpa meniru skalanya. Desain besar yang disebut Mensesneg sebaiknya diterjemahkan menjadi dokumen publik dengan target terukur, misalnya kenaikan bertahap belanja litbang menuju 0,5 persen PDB pada 2030, rasio pendanaan bisnis terhadap publik, dan indikator mutu yang tidak hanya menghitung jumlah artikel. Kementerian juga perlu menyusun program profesor tamu dan peneliti pascadoktoral internasional yang bekerja di laboratorium Indonesia, seperti diusulkan Budi Santosa sejak 2014, sehingga pengetahuan mengalir masuk, bukan hanya mahasiswa yang mengalir keluar. Kepada BRIN, rekomendasinya adalah memanfaatkan posisinya sebagai institusi terdepan Indonesia dalam Nature Index untuk membangun tiga hingga empat program unggulan yang terfokus, dengan pendanaan tahun jamak dan evaluasi internasional, serta membuka akses data dan fasilitas bagi universitas agar konsolidasi tidak memusatkan kapasitas di Jakarta saja. Kepada LPDP, rekomendasinya adalah mengalokasikan sebagian hasil dana abadi penelitian senilai Rp14 triliun untuk hibah kelompok riset domestik yang mengikat alumni luar negeri untuk kembali ke laboratorium yang jelas, bukan sekadar ke kampus asal tanpa infrastruktur.

Kepada perguruan tinggi, termasuk jaringan UIN di bawah Kementerian Agama, rekomendasinya bersifat epistemik sekaligus praktis. Masuknya UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta ke kelompok 801–1000 THE 2027 menunjukkan bahwa perguruan tinggi Islam dapat bersaing dalam ukuran global. Langkah berikutnya adalah membangun pusat kajian yang memadukan tradisi Ibn Khaldun dan Alatas dengan metode ilmu sosial mutakhir, serta menjadikan Singapura, Malaysia, dan Samudra Hindia sebagai objek kajian, bukan hanya Timur Tengah dan Indonesia sendiri. Kementerian Agama dapat mendanai beasiswa doktoral dan pascadoktoral tematik di bidang kajian Asia Tenggara, ekonomi politik kawasan, dan keamanan nonkonvensional. Kepada lembaga kajian dan lembaga survei Indonesia, rekomendasinya adalah merancang survei elite dan publik tentang Singapura dan ASEAN yang dirilis rutin, sehingga data persepsi kawasan tidak hanya bersumber dari satu pihak. Kepada Kementerian Luar Negeri dan DPR, rekomendasinya adalah memisahkan ketegangan politik dari kerja sama akademik, menjaga agar sengketa kabut asap atau pasar modal tidak berujung pada pembatasan riset bersama, sambil menuntut kesetaraan dalam desain, kepemilikan data, dan kepenulisan pada setiap proyek kolaboratif dengan lembaga Singapura.

Keterbatasan dan Kesimpulan

Laporan ini memiliki beberapa keterbatasan yang perlu dinyatakan terbuka. Pertama, data OpenAlex tidak dapat diakses dari lingkungan riset yang digunakan, sehingga perbandingan volume publikasi total dan topik dominan per institusi belum tersaji; penelitian lanjutan sebaiknya menjalankan kueri institusi NUS, NTU, SMU, dan A*STAR melalui API tersebut dan membandingkannya dengan BRIN serta universitas Indonesia terkemuka. Kedua, jumlah Highly Cited Researchers untuk seluruh Singapura dan untuk NUS pada daftar 2023 dan 2024 tidak tersedia dalam sumber yang diperiksa, sehingga tren NUS hanya dibaca dari titik 2022 dan 2025. Ketiga, periode Nature Index untuk kedua negara tidak identik sebagaimana ditampilkan halaman masing-masing. Keempat, sejumlah esai di kba13.com yang disebut dalam laporan ini dirujuk berdasarkan judul dan konteks yang telah diverifikasi sebelumnya, bukan pembacaan ulang menyeluruh pada saat penulisan. Kelima, profil sarjana dibatasi pada mereka yang penanda jabatannya, karya, dan penghargaannya dapat diverifikasi; banyak sarjana penting lain, termasuk di bidang hukum, kedokteran klinis, dan ekonomi, belum tercakup. Keterbatasan ini tidak mengubah arah kesimpulan, tetapi membatasi presisi beberapa angka.

Kesimpulannya, Singapura membuktikan bahwa negara kecil tanpa sumber daya alam dapat menjadi pusat pengetahuan global melalui tiga hal yang saling mengunci: pendanaan riset sekitar satu persen PDB yang konsisten selama hampir dua dekade, konsentrasi institusional pada beberapa universitas dan lembaga kajian berkinerja tinggi, serta hubungan terkelola antara akademia dan negara yang memungkinkan pengetahuan bergerak cepat ke kebijakan. Para sarjananya, dari Wang Gungwu dan Chua Beng Huat hingga Lim Chwee Teck dan Teo You Yenn, bukan sekadar produk sistem itu, tetapi juga penjaga dan pengkritiknya. Bagi Indonesia, pelajaran terpenting bukan meniru skala atau mengejar peringkat, melainkan membangun kapasitas untuk mengkaji balik: mendanai riset secara konsisten, memusatkan keunggulan pada bidang strategis, dan memiliki lembaga yang mampu membaca tetangga dengan kedalaman yang sama seperti tetangga membaca Indonesia. Syed Hussein Alatas pernah mengingatkan bahaya pikiran tertawan; dalam abad data dan peringkat, bahaya itu berganti rupa menjadi ketergantungan tafsir. Ketegangan Oktober 2026 akan berlalu, tetapi pertanyaan tentang siapa yang menulis kawasan ini akan tetap tinggal, dan jawabannya akan ditentukan oleh keputusan anggaran, kelembagaan, dan keberanian intelektual yang diambil Indonesia hari ini.

Introduction: When a Small Neighbour Becomes a Knowledge Factory

October 2026 exposed how fragile relations between Indonesia and Singapore become when three problems arrive at once: preventive-measures notices over haze issued to Indonesia-linked companies, MSCI’s plan to downgrade the classification of Indonesia’s capital market, and cuts to pipeline gas supplies to Singapore. A Mothership report of 16 October 2026 entitled Grace Fu: Preventive measures notice to 7 Indonesian companies recorded that the Minister for Sustainability and the Environment, Grace Fu, had announced notices to seven companies in Indonesia under the Transboundary Haze Pollution Act of 2014, while The Star, in its report of 21 October 2026, Prabowo vows Indonesia will not be ‘frightened’ by MSCI, quoted President Prabowo Subianto as saying that Indonesia is afraid of no one. Behind these diplomatic and market tensions lies a layer that is seldom discussed: inequality in the production of knowledge. When a crisis breaks, the analysis of Indonesia most quickly quoted by the international media is often born in Singapore: at the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute, at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), or among scholars at the National University of Singapore (NUS). An essay in KBA13 Insight of 25 October 2026 entitled Masa Depan Konfrontasi menuju Perang Terbuka Antara Singapura dan Indonesia [The Future of Confrontation towards Open War between Singapore and Indonesia] read these three triggers from the angle of strategic escalation; this report takes another angle, namely who possesses the capacity to interpret, measure, and name the realities of the region.

This is not a new question. In 2014, Hendra Gunawan, a professor in the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the Bandung Institute of Technology, writing in the daily Kompas under the title Mengintip Masa Depan [Peering into the Future], compared Indonesia’s 2014 higher-education budget of around Rp3.2 trillion with a budget of around Rp18 trillion for a single university, NUS, in 2013. The archive catalogue note accompanying the document candidly describes the comparison as rhetorical, since the structure and scope of the budgets differ, but it nonetheless effectively exposes the gulf in research investment. On the same day, Budi Santosa, a professor at the Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology, wrote in Kompas Dari “Brain Drain” ke “Brain Gain” [From “Brain Drain” to “Brain Gain”], proposing that LPDP, Indonesia’s state endowment fund for education, should not merely send students abroad but also attract foreign professors and researchers to Indonesian laboratories. Twelve years later, both pieces read like diagnoses that have not been adequately acted upon. Singapore has moved from S$25 billion in research funding to S$37 billion, while Indonesia only in mid-2026 announced an additional Rp4 trillion for national research.

This report builds on the 2025 KBA13 Insight essay Profil Sarjana Terkenal Singapura: Politik, Ekonomi, Teknologi, Hukum, dan Sains [Profiles of Prominent Singaporean Scholars: Politics, Economics, Technology, Law, and Science] and on the 2026 intellectual biography Kishore Mahbubani: Singapore’s Diplomat-Philosopher and the Case for an Asian Century, which examines Mahbubani’s thinking on the Asian century while noting a gap in his reading of Islam and the Muslim world. Whereas those two works take the form of profile and biography, this report moves to the level of the system. It poses three core questions. First, what do global scientific databases actually show about Singapore’s research strength, and how far can those figures be trusted? Second, who are Singapore’s leading scholars, and in which direction is their research moving, particularly in artificial intelligence, semiconductors, biomedicine, climate, and Southeast Asian and Indonesian studies? Third, what lessons and warnings should Indonesia draw from this asymmetry, at a time when bilateral relations are heating up and knowledge is increasingly becoming an instrument of power?

Analytical Framework, Method, and Levels of Confidence

Theoretically, this report rests on three layers of thought. The first is the sociology of knowledge, which regards science not as a neutral accumulation of facts but as the product of institutions, funding, networks, and incentives. The second is the relationship between knowledge and power: institutions capable of defining problems, designing surveys, and publishing rapid analysis shape the way governments, investors, and the global public understand a country. The third, and the one closest to the intellectual experience of this region, is Syed Hussein Alatas’s critique of the captive mind and of colonial stereotypes. In 2019, a report by the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences entitled Lessons from Syed Hussein Alatas noted that Alatas was the first Head of the NUS Department of Malay Studies and the author of The Myth of the Lazy Native (1977), a work that dismantled the Western image of Southeast Asians as lazy and uncivilised. The irony is that this idea of decolonising knowledge was born in Singapore, a country that has now become one of the most efficient nodes in a global knowledge system built on rankings and citations. This report uses that tension as a lens: Singapore shows that academic autonomy and global integration need not be mutually exclusive, while Indonesia is still struggling to possess both.

Methodologically, this report relies on document analysis and secondary data. The main sources include Clarivate’s press release on the Highly Cited Researchers 2025 list; university releases on the 2023, 2024, and 2025 lists; the official QS, THE, and ShanghaiRanking pages as reported by the universities; the Nature Index country pages for Singapore and Indonesia; documents from Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF), Economic Development Board (EDB), and Prime Minister’s Office; official profiles of think tanks and scholars; and Indonesian media coverage of research policy in 2026. The KBA13 Academy digital archive and KBA13 Insight essays are used as comparative sources and historical documents. The author also attempted to draw institution-level data from the open OpenAlex API, querying the list of institutions with country code SG sorted by number of works, as well as searching for the National University of Singapore institution; however, the API could not be accessed from the research environment used, so Nature Index serves as the measure of institutional output in this report instead. This decision is stated openly so that readers understand that figures for total publication volume, for example from Scopus or OpenAlex, are not presented here.

Every claim is assigned a level of confidence. High confidence is given to figures taken directly from official documents or primary databases, such as the RIE2030 budget of S$37 billion, the Nature Index Share, and researcher counts in official university releases. Medium confidence is given to cross-database comparisons whose periods are not identical, for instance the Nature Index for Singapore covering June 2025 to May 2026 and for Indonesia covering April 2025 to March 2026, as displayed on the respective pages when accessed, as well as to interpretations of research directions inferred from institutional publications and programmes. Low confidence is given to scenario projections, which are inherently speculative. This report deliberately omits h-indices and individual citation counts for scholars, because such figures change daily, differ across databases, and are easily misused as a single measure of intellectual quality. The markers used instead are positions, major works, awards, and academy memberships that can be checked against official sources.

The Architecture of Funding: From RIE2025 to RIE2030

The foundation of Singapore’s knowledge factory is a fiscal consistency rarely matched by developing countries. On 15 February 2022, a parliamentary reply published by the NRF entitled Goals and Priorities Set under Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2025 Plan affirmed an allocation of S$25 billion for RIE2025 and stated that the plan maintained research investment at around one per cent of GDP. The plan was divided into four domains: manufacturing, trade and connectivity; human health and potential; urban solutions and sustainability; and smart nation and digital economy. Over time, the RIE2025 budget was enlarged. An EDB report of 31 August 2026 entitled Singapore’s inaugural RIE2025 report card recorded that RIE2025 was worth S$28 billion for the period April 2021 to March 2026, that business-sector R&D spending rose 64 per cent to S$9 billion between 2018 and 2023, and that every S$1 of public R&D spending was matched by S$1.87 of business spending in 2023, up from S$1.48 in 2018. This last ratio is in fact the most important: public money functions as bait that draws in private capital, not as a substitute for it.

RIE2030 raises the stakes. An EDB report of 5 December 2025 entitled Singapore invests S$37 billion in RIE2030 research plan cited a 32 per cent increase over RIE2025, with S$10.8 billion for the four domains, S$3 billion for two new types of programme, namely RIE Flagships and RIE Grand Challenges, 24 per cent for fundamental research, 20 per cent for innovation and enterprise, 17 per cent for infrastructure and new programmes, and 10 per cent for talent development. The first Flagship is semiconductors, led by A*STAR and the EDB, while the first Grand Challenge targets active ageing, that is, slowing the cognitive and physical decline of older citizens. The August 2026 EDB report added the detail that the S$3 billion package of Flagships and Grand Challenges comprises S$800 million each for semiconductors, transport and connectivity, and decarbonisation, S$350 million for healthy longevity, and a S$250 million buffer fund. There is also a Research Translation Grant of S$300 million to accelerate the commercialisation of research outcomes. This structure reveals the logic of a city-state: research is directed at existential vulnerabilities, such as dependence on chip supply chains, an ageing population, and the climate threat to a low-lying island.

Compare this with Indonesia. An InvestorTrust report of 29 June 2026 entitled Indonesia Boosts Research Budget by $252 Million cited World Bank data showing Indonesia’s R&D spending at around 0.28 per cent of GDP, against a world average of 2.59 per cent, Malaysia’s 1.01 per cent, and Thailand’s 0.94 per cent. An Antara report of 15 August 2026 entitled Laying stronger footing for Indonesia’s research push added that national research spending had for years hovered at Rp5 to 7 trillion a year, fell to around Rp3 to 4 trillion after the 2025 budget-efficiency policy, and then received an additional Rp4 trillion that almost doubled BRIN’s budget from its lowest point. The same report noted that former BRIN Head Laksana Tri Handoko cited an ideal figure of around one per cent of GDP, a figure that happens to be exactly the level Singapore has sustained for almost two decades. The fundamental difference lies not only in magnitude but also in predictability: Singapore sets five-year frameworks that researchers know well in advance, whereas Indonesian research depends on an annual budget cycle that can be cut abruptly, making it hard for laboratories to plan long-term programmes and attract the best researchers.

Reading the Databases: Rankings, the Nature Index, and Highly Cited Researchers

University rankings are the lens most often quoted and also the most often misunderstood. In the QS World University Rankings 2027 released on 18 June 2026, a report by The Straits Times archived by NTU under the title NUS falls to 10th place while NTU retains 12th spot recorded that NUS fell from 8th to 10th in the world, NTU held 12th place, the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) leapt 253 places to 266th, and Singapore Management University (SMU) rose to 411th. In the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2027, a report by the NUS School of Computing on 1 October 2026 entitled NUS reaches highest-ever position at 15th stated that NUS had reached the highest position in its history at 15th out of 2,297 institutions, while an NTU report of 14 October 2026 entitled NTU Singapore rises to 28th recorded a three-place climb to 28th. ARWU offers a simpler picture: the ShanghaiRanking institution page for the National University of Singapore shows a rank of 56th for 2025, while the page for Nanyang Technological University shows 84th for 2026.

The ARWU data hold an interesting clue. On the ShanghaiRanking page for NUS, the scores for the Alumni and Award indicators, that is, alumni and staff who have won the Nobel Prize or the Fields Medal, are both recorded as 0.0, while the publications score reaches 64.5 and the highly cited researchers score 43.6. In other words, Singapore’s strength derives from the volume and quality of contemporary publications, not from a legacy of the highest scientific honours. That gap is partly filled through recruitment. On 5 April 2019, NUS News, in its report Nobel laureate Konstantin Novoselov joins NUS, announced that the 2010 Nobel laureate in Physics for graphene research had joined as a Distinguished Professor, the first Nobel laureate to become a staff member of a Singaporean university. This strategy of importing top-tier talent, combined with the cultivation of local scholars, is a hallmark of the Singaporean system that deserves close scrutiny without romanticisation.

The Nature Index provides a stricter measure because it counts only articles in a selected group of natural science and health journals. The Nature Index page for Singapore for the period 1 June 2025 to 30 May 2026 records 2,488 articles with a Share of 914.78, placing Singapore 16th in the world and 6th in the Asia-Pacific. NUS contributes a Share of 426.79, NTU 317.41, and A*STAR 89.00. Its greatest strengths lie in the applied sciences, ranked 14th in the world, and chemistry, also 14th in the world. By comparison, the Nature Index page for Indonesia for the period 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026 records 205 articles with a Share of 50.06 and a world position of 47th, with BRIN first nationally on a Share of 7.57, followed by Universitas Indonesia at 5.26, ITB at 4.80, and UGM at 4.61. In other words, the Share of NUS alone is around eight and a half times that of all of Indonesia, even though the periods on the two pages are not exactly the same.

Clarivate’s Highly Cited Researchers list reveals subtler dynamics. An NTU press release of 15 November 2023 entitled NTU is 22nd globally and first locally with most highly cited researchers recorded 42 NTU researchers with 44 mentions, the most in Singapore for the sixth consecutive year. NTU’s release of 19 November 2024, NTU Singapore scientists named among most influential researchers in the world, recorded 36 researchers, and its release of 12 November 2025, NTU Singapore scientists named among world’s most influential researchers, recorded 33 researchers with 36 mentions. Conversely, NUS News on 12 November 2025, in its report NUS academics recognised among world’s leading scientists, recorded 37 NUS researchers, while on the 2022 list the number exceeded 30 according to the NUS News release of 15 November 2022. The decline at NTU must be read alongside changes in Clarivate’s methodology: the press release Clarivate Announces Highly Cited Researchers 2025 List states that 432 candidate awards were excluded because of hyperprolific publication, together with new screening for excessive self-citation. On a ten-year scale, a Clarivate analysis reported by Infodocket on 26 February 2026 noted that the number of awards for Singapore quadrupled between 2015 and 2025.

The Think-Tank Ecosystem and the Revolving-Door Pattern

If universities are the engines of scientific production, think tanks are the control room of interpretation. Singapore has a dense ecosystem for a country of its size. The ISEAS page Our History and Mission records that parliament passed the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Act on 7 June 1968, and that the institution was renamed the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute in August 2015; its programmes include the ASEAN Studies Centre, the Singapore APEC Study Centre, studies of the region’s economics, socio-cultural affairs, and politics and strategy, country programmes for Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, as well as programmes on climate change and on media and technology. The Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), according to its About Us page, was founded in 1988 as an independent think tank, joined the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in 2008 as an autonomous research centre, and in 2026 became a university-level autonomous research institute. The East Asian Institute, according to its Profile and Objectives page, was established in April 1997 as the successor to an institute founded by Goh Keng Swee in 1983 to study Confucianism, and now focuses on China, Japan, and the Korean Peninsula. The NUS Asia Research Institute has been active since 2001 according to its About ARI page, while the NUS Middle East Institute was founded in 2007 according to its About MEI page.

At NTU, RSIS describes itself as a global graduate school and a strategic think tank. Its About RSIS page lists five research centres, namely the Centre for Multilateralism Studies, the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, the Centre of Excellence for National Security, the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, and the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, in addition to programmes on national security studies, social cohesion, and interreligious relations. Its leadership pattern reveals what might be called a managed revolving door. An RSIS announcement of 3 November 2014 entitled Leadership Transition at RSIS stated that Ambassador Ong Keng Yong had become Executive Deputy Chairman, succeeding Ambassador Barry Desker, while the academic Joseph Liow became Dean. At ISEAS, the About Us page records that Ng Chee Khern was appointed Director and CEO on 1 April 2026; he was previously Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Manpower (2022–2025), Permanent Secretary for Smart Nation and Digital Government (2017–2022), and Chief of the Republic of Singapore Air Force (2006–2009).

The same pattern is visible in the most important public figure of Singaporean policy scholarship. ARI’s Distinguished Fellow page records that Kishore Mahbubani served in Singapore’s foreign service for 33 years (1971–2004), was twice Ambassador to the United Nations, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1993–1998), and then founding Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School (2004–2017) before becoming a Distinguished Fellow at ARI from 1 July 2019. In the Indonesian tradition, a move from the bureaucracy to academia is often suspected as a politicisation of scholarship; in the Singaporean tradition, it is regarded as a way of transferring the experience of the state into a space for reflection, and conversely of bringing academic analysis to the policy table. The consequences are twofold. On the one hand, Singaporean think tanks enjoy a high degree of access, speed, and policy sensitivity. On the other hand, the boundary between independent analysis and state interest becomes blurred, so Indonesian readers need to read their output both as valuable knowledge and as part of the diplomatic toolkit of a small state. The 2025 book by Kamaruzzaman Bustamam Ahmad and Fitri Zulfidar Ibrahim, Intelligence as Statecraft: Singapore’s Strategic Transformation in the Indo-Pacific, describes this logic as a fusion of human and digital cognition across military, civilian, and academic institutions, with the thesis that coordination, not size, determines power.

Scholars in the Social Sciences and Humanities: From Wang Gungwu to Teo You Yenn

At the summit of Singapore’s humanities tradition stands Wang Gungwu. On 22 June 2020, an NUS report entitled Eminent NUS historian Professor Wang Gungwu receives prestigious Tang Prize recorded that he had received the 2020 Tang Prize in Sinology for his studies of the Chinese world order, the diaspora, and Chinese migration; he has been University Professor at NUS since 2007, was Director of the East Asian Institute from 1997 to 2007, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong from 1986 to 1995, and is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Wang’s distinction lies in his vantage point: he reads China from the south, through its relations with Southeast Asia, rather than from within or from the West. In sociology, Chua Beng Huat occupies a similar position. NUS Press in 2017 published Liberalism Disavowed: Communitarianism and State Capitalism in Singapore, which analyses how the People’s Action Party built a communitarian ideology through public housing, multiracialism, and state capitalism; ARI’s pages also record that Chua led the Cultural Studies in Asia cluster from 2000 to 2015. Both demonstrate that Singapore’s best scholars do not merely praise their country but analyse it critically from within.

The Alatas legacy continues through his son. The entry on Syed Farid Alatas records that he has taught in the NUS Department of Sociology since 1992 and wrote Alternative Discourses in Asian Social Science: Responses to Eurocentrism (2006) and Applying Ibn Khaldun: The Recovery of a Lost Tradition in Sociology (2014). This father-and-son project, namely building an autonomous social science and reviving Ibn Khaldun as a social theorist, is highly relevant to Indonesia’s Islamic universities, including the UIN network, because it offers a bridge between the Islamic intellectual heritage and modern social science without falling into apologetics. The 2026 book Islam di Dunia Melayu dan Samudera Hindia [Islam in the Malay World and the Indian Ocean] places Syed Hussein Alatas among the scholars engaged in dialogue in formulating the Malay–Indian Ocean region as an epistemic field. In history and academic leadership, Tan Tai Yong exemplifies the historian who leads institutions. A SUSS announcement of 19 July 2022 entitled SUSS appoints Humanities Professor Tan Tai Yong as President recorded that he has served as President of the Singapore University of Social Sciences since 1 January 2023 after leading Yale-NUS College, with works including Singapore: Seven Hundred Years (2019) and Creating Greater Malaysia (2008).

Policy studies and international relations have produced the figures best known to the public. Besides Mahbubani, Danny Quah is an economist of global reputation. The official profile of Danny Quah at the LKY School records that he is Li Ka Shing Professor in Economics, Director of the Asia Competitiveness Institute, Dean from 2018 to 2025, and previously Head of the Department of Economics at the London School of Economics; his current interests include economic statecraft and the future of multilateralism. Joseph Liow, according to an NTU report of 10 October 2025 entitled New dean for Lee Kuan Yew School, moved to NUS as Dean of the LKY School after 28 years at NTU, including as dean of RSIS and dean of the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences; he is also Chairman of MEI. In security studies, an RSIS announcement of 23 December 2025 entitled Re-appointment of Dean in RSIS recorded that Kumar Ramakrishna had been reappointed as Dean for three years from 1 January 2026; he is the founder of the Centre of Excellence for National Security and the author of Jemaah Islamiyah, ISIS and Beyond, published in July 2025. For Indonesia, Ramakrishna’s work matters because terrorism studies in Southeast Asia depend heavily on data and narratives about groups rooted in Indonesia.

The next generation displays a sharper critical direction. Teo You Yenn, according to the CV she published in April 2026, is Provost’s Chair in Sociology and Director of the Centre for the Study of Social Inequality at NTU, author of This Is What Inequality Looks Like (2018), which has also been published in Taiwan and China, and of Unease: Life in Singapore Families (2026). Terence Chong, according to his ISEAS profile, is Deputy CEO and Senior Director of the ISEAS Research Division, with studies of the middle class, Pentecostal Christianity, and new Chinese migrants in the CLMV countries. Leo Suryadinata, a Jakarta-born scholar, according to an RSIS report of 6 October 2018 entitled Indonesia honours S’porean for work on ethnic Chinese, became the first Singaporean to receive a cultural award from Indonesia’s Ministry of Education and Culture for his studies of the Chinese Indonesian community. Kenneth Paul Tan shows another side of this system. The Hong Kong Baptist University page records that he is a former Vice Dean of the LKY School who moved to HKBU in February 2021, and the author of Singapore: Identity, Brand, Power (2018). His departure is a reminder that an efficient ecosystem is not always a comfortable home for every critical voice.

Scientists in Science, Technology, and Biomedicine

In science and technology, the clearest markers are national awards and membership of international academies. A BioSpectrum Asia report of 3 October 2025 entitled Singapore honors excellence at the 2025 President’s Science and Technology Awards recorded that NUS President Tan Eng Chye received the President’s Science and Technology Medal, Lim Chwee Teck and Lisa Ng received the President’s Science Award, and Andy Tay received the Young Scientist Award. Lim Chwee Teck deserves particular attention. His official profile in the NUS Department of Biomedical Engineering records that he is a Distinguished Professor and Director of the Institute for Health Innovation and Technology (iHealthtech), was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2024, an International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2025, and an international member of the US National Academy of Engineering in 2026, and is a co-founder of several start-ups, including Biolidics. His research on the mechanobiology of disease, biomedical microfluidics, and wearable technology exemplifies this generation of Singaporean scientists: publishing in leading journals while founding companies.

University leadership in Singapore is likewise held by scientists of international standing. An NTU release of 8 February 2023 entitled Professor Ho Teck Hua appointed president of NTU recorded that he would become NTU’s fifth president from 24 April 2023 after serving as Senior Deputy President and Provost of NUS since 2018, with expertise in behavioural science and behavioural economics. His predecessor, Subra Suresh, according to the entry on Subra Suresh, led NTU from 2018 to 2022 after serving as Director of the US National Science Foundation and President of Carnegie Mellon University, and received the National Medal of Science in 2023. At A*STAR, Jackie Ying has become a striking symbol for the Muslim world. A Princeton Engineering report of 19 February 2016 entitled Jackie Ying receives Mustafa Prize and is named AAAS Fellow recorded that, as Executive Director of A*STAR’s Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, she received the 2015 Mustafa Prize, described as the highest science award in the Islamic world, for her research on drug-delivery systems and nanoparticles that regulate the release of insulin.

The 2025 Highly Cited Researchers list maps who is shaping global research currents from Singapore. At NUS, according to the NUS News report already cited, the names include Konstantin Novoselov and Antonio Castro Neto in physics, Liu Bin and Yan Ning in chemistry, Jochen Wirtz in economics and business, Thomas Yeo in neuroscience, and Yan Shuicheng in engineering. A report by the NUS School of Computing of 14 November 2025 entitled Two NUS Computing Professors Among the World’s Most Highly Cited Researchers 2025 named Yan Shuicheng and Zhang Yang as drivers of research in artificial intelligence and computational biology. At NTU, the 2025 release named Joseph Sung, Dean of the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine; Lee Pooi See; Warren Chan; Pu Kanyi, recognised in three fields at once and one of only 31 scientists worldwide with that achievement; and Yuen Chau in computer science and engineering. This composition reveals two things. First, Singapore’s excellence is concentrated in materials, chemistry, energy, and engineering. Second, many of its stars are foreign-born scientists, so institutional attractiveness, not local talent alone, is the decisive variable.

Research Directions towards 2030

Singapore’s research directions can be read from three mutually reinforcing sources: funding priorities, subject profiles in the databases, and think-tank agendas. On the funding side, RIE2030 places semiconductors, artificial intelligence, quantum technology, digital trust, biomanufacturing, precision health, active ageing, climate resilience, and the low-carbon transition at its centre of gravity. In his launch remarks of 5 December 2025, published by the Prime Minister’s Office under the title SM Lee Hsien Loong at the Press Conference on the Launch of RIE2030, Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that the aim of the semiconductor Flagship was to make Singapore a strategically important R&D node in that industry. On the database side, the subject breakdown on NTU’s University Rankings page shows NTU ranked 4th in the world for Data Science and AI and for Electrical and Electronic Engineering in the QS by Subject 2026, while the ShanghaiRanking pages show NUS ranked first in the world for Geography and 6th for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. This pattern confirms that Singapore is building excellence at the intersection of hard technology and state needs.

In the social sciences, research is moving along four axes. The first axis is great-power competition and the international order, as seen in the theme of the ISEAS Regional Outlook Forum of 8 January 2026, Confronting Chaos: The Future of International Order in Southeast Asia, and in Danny Quah’s interest in economic statecraft. The second axis is national security and social cohesion, especially at RSIS with its programmes on counter-terrorism, cybersecurity, and interreligious relations. The third axis is inequality, ageing, and the family, as seen in the IPS agenda and in the work of Teo You Yenn. The fourth axis, and the most relevant for Indonesian readers, is the study of neighbouring countries, above all Indonesia, managed through the country programmes at ISEAS and the Indonesia programme at RSIS. This direction is consistent with the logic of a small state: understand the great powers in order to navigate, understand one’s own society in order to remain cohesive, and understand one’s neighbours in order not to be caught by surprise.

Climate and sustainability form the meeting point between the natural and the social sciences. On the science side, the Nature Index places Singapore 26th in the world for earth and environmental sciences, lower than its standing in chemistry and the applied sciences, which is why RIE2030 adds S$800 million for decarbonisation. On the social science side, ISEAS has a Climate Change in Southeast Asia programme which, according to an ISEAS note of 3 September 2026, is coordinated by Principal Fellow Sharon Seah. For Indonesia, this axis is sensitive, because transboundary haze, plantation companies, and the Transboundary Haze Pollution Act lie precisely at its intersection. A KBA13 Insight study of 20 October 2026 on the 2026 fires and corporate networks linked to Singapore and Malaysia, entitled Beyond the Smoke, highlights the regional accountability gap. As Singapore’s climate research grows more sophisticated, the ability to generate independent data on fires, land ownership, and supply chains from the Indonesian side becomes a precondition for ensuring the debate is not dominated by one party.

Indonesia as an Object of Study: Surveys, Programmes, and Narratives

Almost no country is studied as intensively by Singaporean institutions as Indonesia. The profile of Julia Lau records that she is a Principal Fellow and Coordinator of the ISEAS Indonesia Studies Programme, with projects on Indonesian domestic politics, the capital city Nusantara, and Indonesia’s foreign policy as a middle power. The profile of Siwage Dharma Negara for the 2026 Regional Outlook Forum names him as a Senior Fellow and Co-coordinator of the same programme, focusing on Indonesia’s macroeconomy, industry, and trade. At RSIS, the profile of Alexander Raymond Arifianto records that he is a Senior Fellow and Coordinator of the Indonesia Programme at IDSS, with 2025 policy reports on Indonesian foreign policy under Prabowo and on political Islam during the Prabowo presidency. The 2024 KBA13 Insight essay Relasi Indonesia–Singapura: Interdependensi Ekonomi, Politik Keamanan, dan Dinamika Strategis ASEAN [Indonesia–Singapore Relations: Economic Interdependence, Security Politics, and ASEAN Strategic Dynamics] provides the strategic background to this intensity of attention.

The most influential instrument is the survey. ISEAS published The Indonesia National Survey Project in 2017 and 2022; the ISEAS bookshop page for The Indonesia National Survey Project 2022 lists its authors as Burhanuddin Muhtadi, Hui Yew-Foong, and Siwage Dharma Negara, with findings on public approval of President Joko Widodo at around 71.8 per cent before the September 2022 fuel-subsidy cut, more negative views of China’s rise than in 2017, and admiration for Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Singapore. Burhanuddin Muhtadi himself, according to his ISEAS profile, is a professor of political science at UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta, executive director of Indikator Politik Indonesia, and a Visiting Fellow at ISEAS. At the regional level, ISEAS Perspective 2026/65 by Melinda Martinus, published on 10 September 2026 under the title Indonesia’s Strategic Preferences amid Great-Power Competition, analyses the State of Southeast Asia 2026 survey of 2,008 respondents, 236 of them from Indonesia; when forced to choose, 80.1 per cent of Indonesian respondents said ASEAN should side with China, and only 17.3 per cent trusted the United States, the lowest since the survey began in 2019.

These facts conceal a paradox. Indonesian scholars are present and play important roles in Singaporean institutions, but the framing of questions, the financing, and the publication channels are largely determined from Singapore. The State of Southeast Asia survey, for instance, involved only 236 Indonesian respondents, so its results must be read with attention to sample size and composition; Martinus herself interprets Indonesia’s shift as declining trust in American policy rather than alignment with Beijing. Yet once these figures are quoted by the global media, methodological nuance is often lost. In the situation of October 2026, as the haze and MSCI issues heated up, the analysis of Indonesia that circulated most quickly internationally once again came from Singapore. The 2025 KBA13 Insight essay Kekuatan Intelijen Singapura: Struktur, Aliansi, dan Teknologi 10 Tahun Terakhir [Singapore’s Intelligence Power: Structure, Alliances, and Technology over the Last Ten Years] and the book Memotret Wajah Singapore Inc. di Indonesia [Portraying the Face of Singapore Inc. in Indonesia] (2025) place this phenomenon within a broader frame of capital, diplomacy, and the information economy. This asymmetry is not a conspiracy, but the logical outcome of half a century of differing investment.

Asymmetry in Numbers: A Verified Comparison

The following table summarises the verifiable indicators from the sources cited in this report. It deliberately excludes total national publication or citation counts, because OpenAlex data could not be accessed in this study and Scopus figures were not available from the open sources examined. The notes column states the period or edition of each figure, so that readers can judge the degree of comparability for themselves. What matters most in this table is not the absolute gap, which is partly to be expected given differences in income levels, but the gap relative to the size of each country. Indonesia is an archipelagic nation with a population many times larger, yet its Nature Index Share is less than one-sixteenth of Singapore’s. This inequality is also visible in university rankings: Indonesia’s best university in QS 2027 is ranked 191st, while in THE 2027, according to an RCTI+ report of 30 September 2026 entitled 42 Universitas Terbaik Indonesia Masuk Peringkat THE WUR 2027 [42 of Indonesia’s Best Universities Enter the THE WUR 2027 Rankings], Universitas Indonesia is in the 651–700 band, while UGM and UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta are in the 801–1000 band.

Reading the table honestly demands two cautions. The first concerns measurement: the Nature Index is heavily biased towards the natural sciences and elite journals, so it does not capture Indonesia’s research strengths in fields such as Islamic studies, local anthropology, or applied agricultural science, much of which appears in national journals. The second concerns trends: Indonesia’s Nature Index data show that BRIN, following the consolidation of LIPI, BATAN, LAPAN, BPPT, and the Eijkman Institute, is now the leading institution, which means institutional consolidation has begun to yield statistical results, albeit at a large transition cost. In 2020, Asep Bayu Dani Nandiyanto and colleagues, writing in the Indonesian Journal of Science and Technology under the title How bibliographic dataset portrays decreasing number of scientific publication from Indonesia, showed that the growth of Indonesian publications in Scopus over 2014–2019 was driven largely by journal articles and conference papers, and then declined in 2018–2019. The lesson from Singapore is that volume without concentration on quality and strategic fields does not produce influence. On the other hand, LPDP, with an endowment of Rp180.8 trillion, in fact possesses substantial capital to change this pattern, provided it is directed towards building research groups at home rather than only sending individuals abroad.

What the Leaders Say

The statements of leaders reveal how the two countries frame research. In his RIE2030 launch remarks of 5 December 2025, published by Singapore’s Prime Minister’s Office, Lee Hsien Loong explained the existential logic behind the investment by saying that Singapore is “resource-disadvantaged, so all the more we need advanced science and tech capabilities”. He also stressed that “a critical success factor is high-quality talent” and that his country “will be investing $37 billion over the next five years in R&D”, around one per cent of GDP, a level sustained for almost twenty years. The EDB report on RIE2030 quoted Tan Chorh Chuan as saying that interest in Singapore’s R&D was in fact growing, and that breakthroughs that truly drive change “often has to come from very novel areas of science and application”. At the university level, the NUS School of Computing report on THE 2027 quoted NUS President Tan Eng Chye: “This is not a one-off result. It reflects intentional, sustained effort over many years.” The recurring keywords in these statements are consistency, talent, and the scarcity of natural resources as a reason to invest in knowledge.

In Indonesia, the language used is different but shows a growing awareness. A Cabinet Secretariat report on the opening of the Sarasehan Kebangsaan KSTI 2026 [2026 National Dialogue of the Science, Technology and Innovation Convention] on 26 June 2026, attended by more than 2,600 participants according to the Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology, Brian Yuliarto, quoted President Prabowo Subianto: “I have always held that professors are the cleverest people in a nation.” The President also stated that the potential and capabilities of universities “must indeed be harnessed or mobilised”. An RCTI+ report of 28 June 2026 entitled Mensesneg Ungkap Prabowo Tambah Anggaran Riset Rp4 Triliun [State Secretary Reveals Prabowo Adds Rp4 Trillion to Research Budget] quoted the Minister of State Secretary, Prasetyo Hadi, as saying that the research budget had been increased “up to the figure of Rp4 trillion” and that “everything must be within one grand design”. The comparison between these two sets of statements is instructive. Singapore speaks in the language of two decades of continuity and locked-in five-year figures; Indonesia speaks in the language of recognition, mobilisation, and a grand design yet to be drawn up. The real test for Indonesia is whether that grand design survives beyond a single budget cycle and a single term of government.

Counterarguments

There are at least four serious objections to the reading offered in this report. The first holds that rankings and bibliometric databases are commercial constructs biased towards English, the natural sciences, and wealthy institutions, and are therefore unfit to serve as measures of scientific progress. This objection is legitimate. NUS can fall from 8th to 10th in QS and rise to 15th in THE in the same year, demonstrating sensitivity to methodology. Clarivate itself excluded hundreds of candidate awards because of anomalous publication and citation patterns. Yet it is precisely for this reason that this report uses several databases at once and avoids individual figures. When QS, THE, ARWU, the Nature Index, and Highly Cited Researchers all point in the same direction, the conclusion about the size of the gap becomes robust even if the exact figures remain debatable. The second objection holds that comparing a wealthy city-state with an archipelagic nation of hundreds of millions of people is unfair. This report agrees that absolute comparisons mislead; that is why the emphasis falls on patterns, namely funding consistency, institutional concentration, and the relationship between think tanks and the state, which can be learned from without having to replicate scale.

The third objection holds that Singapore’s advantage is partly imported: many highly cited researchers are foreign-born scientists, and that strength could evaporate if the geopolitical environment or immigration policy changes. The NTU data, which fell from 42 to 33 researchers in three years, lend some support to this argument, although changes in Clarivate’s methodology also played a part. Kenneth Paul Tan’s move to Hong Kong shows that a highly managed system can lose its critical voices. The fourth objection holds that the proximity of think tanks to the state actually weakens their credibility, so Indonesia need not worry about the dominance of Singaporean interpretation. This objection is weak. The international credibility of ISEAS and RSIS is evident from how often they are quoted by the global media and invited to policy forums, and the quality of scholars such as Wang Gungwu, Chua Beng Huat, or Teo You Yenn is not diminished by institutional proximity. Moreover, Indonesian scholars themselves take part in that knowledge production. The appropriate response, therefore, is not to reject knowledge from Singapore but to build equivalent capacity to engage with it, test it, and, where necessary, refute it with data.

Scenarios for the Knowledge Balance to 2030

Four scenarios are constructed on the basis of two driving variables: the consistency of Indonesia’s research funding, whether it remains at around 0.3 per cent of GDP or moves towards one per cent, and the direction of bilateral relations, whether they remain cooperative or undergo securitisation after the October 2026 crisis. The first scenario, widening asymmetry, occurs if Singapore implements RIE2030 as planned while Indonesia reverts to a pattern of easily cut annual budgets; the gap in the Nature Index and the rankings widens, and international interpretation of Indonesia continues to come from outside. The second scenario, selective catch-up, occurs if the additional Rp4 trillion becomes a new floor, LPDP directs its research endowment towards domestic research groups, and BRIN together with the universities builds three or four fields of excellence, for example biodiversity, disaster studies, energy, and Southeast Asian Islamic studies. The third scenario, securitisation of knowledge, occurs if diplomatic tensions seep into academic cooperation, for example through restrictions on data access, suspicion of foreign researchers, or the freezing of joint programmes, so that both sides lose. The fourth scenario, collaborative convergence, occurs if the two countries build joint research institutions and jointly designed surveys, so that Indonesia becomes a co-producer, not merely an object, of regional studies.

The widening-asymmetry scenario is given the highest weight because it is supported by historical data: Indonesia’s R&D spending has remained at around 0.28 to 0.3 per cent of GDP for years, and the 2025 cuts showed how fragile annual commitments are. The selective catch-up scenario is reasonably strong because there are new political signals: the President’s attendance at KSTI 2026, the additional Rp4 trillion, and LPDP’s large endowment. Early-warning indicators to distinguish between these two scenarios can be monitored annually, namely whether the 2027 and 2028 research budgets at least maintain the 2026 increase, whether Indonesia’s Nature Index Share moves above 60, whether any Indonesian university enters the QS top 150, and whether an Indonesian think tank emerges that regularly publishes analysis of Singapore and Malaysia to international standards. The securitisation scenario must not be underestimated. The haze, MSCI, and gas crises of October 2026 showed that public sentiment can shift quickly, and the history of relations between the two countries, from the MacDonald House bombing of 1965 to the 2014 controversy over the naming of the warship KRI Usman Harun, shows that collective memory is easily reawakened. The collaborative-convergence scenario is the most desirable, but currently the least likely because it requires political trust that is presently wearing thin.

Recommendations for Indonesian Actors

To the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology, the principal recommendation is to lock in a five-year research funding framework that cannot be cut midway, emulating the discipline of RIE without emulating its scale. The grand design mentioned by the State Secretary should be translated into a public document with measurable targets, for example a gradual increase in R&D spending towards 0.5 per cent of GDP by 2030, a ratio of business to public funding, and quality indicators that do not merely count articles. The ministry also needs to establish a programme of visiting professors and international postdoctoral researchers working in Indonesian laboratories, as Budi Santosa proposed in 2014, so that knowledge flows in, rather than only students flowing out. To BRIN, the recommendation is to leverage its position as Indonesia’s leading institution in the Nature Index to build three to four focused flagship programmes, with multi-year funding and international evaluation, and to open access to its data and facilities for universities so that consolidation does not concentrate capacity in Jakarta alone. To LPDP, the recommendation is to allocate part of the returns of its Rp14 trillion research endowment to grants for domestic research groups that bind overseas alumni to return to well-defined laboratories, rather than merely to their home campuses without infrastructure.

To universities, including the UIN network under the Ministry of Religious Affairs, the recommendations are both epistemic and practical. The entry of UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta into the 801–1000 band of THE 2027 shows that Islamic universities can compete on global measures. The next step is to build research centres that combine the traditions of Ibn Khaldun and Alatas with state-of-the-art social science methods, and to make Singapore, Malaysia, and the Indian Ocean objects of study, not only the Middle East and Indonesia itself. The Ministry of Religious Affairs could fund thematic doctoral and postdoctoral scholarships in Southeast Asian studies, regional political economy, and non-traditional security. To Indonesian think tanks and polling institutes, the recommendation is to design elite and public surveys on Singapore and ASEAN that are released regularly, so that data on regional perceptions do not come from one side only. To the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the House of Representatives (DPR), the recommendation is to separate political tensions from academic cooperation, ensuring that disputes over haze or capital markets do not end in restrictions on joint research, while demanding equality in design, data ownership, and authorship in every collaborative project with Singaporean institutions.

Limitations and Conclusion

This report has several limitations that should be stated openly. First, OpenAlex data could not be accessed from the research environment used, so comparisons of total publication volume and dominant topics per institution are not yet presented; further research should run institutional queries for NUS, NTU, SMU, and A*STAR through that API and compare them with BRIN and leading Indonesian universities. Second, the numbers of Highly Cited Researchers for Singapore as a whole and for NUS on the 2023 and 2024 lists were not available in the sources examined, so the NUS trend is read only from the 2022 and 2025 data points. Third, the Nature Index periods for the two countries are not identical, as displayed on their respective pages. Fourth, several kba13.com essays mentioned in this report are cited on the basis of titles and context verified previously, not a full re-reading at the time of writing. Fifth, the scholar profiles are limited to those whose positions, works, and awards can be verified; many other important scholars, including in law, clinical medicine, and economics, are not yet covered. These limitations do not change the direction of the conclusions, but they constrain the precision of some figures.

In conclusion, Singapore demonstrates that a small state without natural resources can become a global centre of knowledge through three interlocking elements: research funding of around one per cent of GDP sustained consistently for almost two decades, institutional concentration in a few high-performing universities and think tanks, and a managed relationship between academia and the state that allows knowledge to move quickly into policy. Its scholars, from Wang Gungwu and Chua Beng Huat to Lim Chwee Teck and Teo You Yenn, are not merely products of that system but also its guardians and its critics. For Indonesia, the most important lesson is not to imitate scale or chase rankings, but to build the capacity to study back: to fund research consistently, to concentrate excellence in strategic fields, and to possess institutions capable of reading the neighbours with the same depth with which the neighbours read Indonesia. Syed Hussein Alatas once warned of the danger of the captive mind; in the age of data and rankings, that danger has taken a new form as interpretive dependence. The tensions of October 2026 will pass, but the question of who writes this region will remain, and its answer will be determined by the budgetary, institutional, and intellectual choices that Indonesia makes today.