Class Year

In every Facebook personal info page, especially in education section, there is an entry field named Class Year. This entry is widely misunderstood by Indonesians. Class year is used to show the year when someone finished his/her study. See here for the explanation. This concept is not familiar here. Here in Indonesia, students usually identify themselves by the year when they started the study. Let me take myself for example. I started my study in Electrical Engineering GMU in 1997 (just remind me that it was 12 years ago, it has been quite a long time). So, people will recognize me as Albert from EE 97. People don’t care about when I finished my study. I finished my study in 2002, but people won’t recognize me as Albert from EE, the class of 02.

The effect is, many Indonesians fill that field with the year when they started the study, while some others fill that field with the year they finished their study. This is sometimes confusing.

This made me think a little bit further. Why is the concept of class year not familiar here? Is it because of the unpredictability of study duration, here in Indonesia?

What do you think?