An acquaintance had run for the office of village head/chief (perbekel in Bali) and won. Now, he has been serving for a few years and it appears he made a lot of wonderful innovation. Young and highly educated, a software programmer if I am not mistaken, he utilizes information technology in governing as well as promotes green sustainable practices.
How common is this phenomenon of young, highly educated village chiefs across Bali? Toying with BPS data, I found that he is quite unique. Defining young as less than 45 years old, and highly educated as at least having a college degree, the combination of the two variables at once is not common at regency level in Bali.
The scatter plot below maps regencies according to their ratios (in percentage) of highly educated chiefs (Y axis) and young chiefs (X axis). It demonstrates that its upper-right area is rather empty. The area is supposed to be where regencies with a high ratio of both young and educated chiefs are clustered (I define high ratio as surpassing 1:1 or more than 100%).
Instead of seeing regencies with high ratios of both variables, we see regencies where one variable being dominant. Take Denpasar and Badung (at the upper-left side): two regencies which host highly educated chiefs with a ratio of more than 4 college graduates to 1 high school graduate. And yet, they are populated with fewer young chiefs with a ratio of 4 to 5.
The case of Bangli is also interesting (the lower-right side). It has a lot of young chiefs with the ratio of 3 to 2 (157% to be exact) but very few college educated ones. The ratio is a little over 1:3 or 35.8%. Tabanan, the regency where this acquaintance resides, is typical of most regencies. It has less than 1:1 ratio of college educated chiefs compared to the high school graduates. It also still lacks young ones with the ratio of a little over 3:5 or 65.8%.
Buleleng, my hometown, is trailing at both. It has fewer highly educated and young chiefs compared to the rest (see that sad dot at the lower-left side).
NB: data from BPS, 2014.