Reorienting Higher Education
Our higher education has followed the same course for decades without daring to enter into the details of the things that are needed now.
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In many of his recent speeches, President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo has frequently emphasized the importance of flexibility that would enable our education to respond to rapid changes in the world.
According to the President, our higher education has followed the same course for decades without daring to enter into the details of the things that are needed now. "We are too linear, too routine, despite the fact that changes are happening very quickly," said the President.
According to Jokowi, higher education must offer those majors the public needs. Higher education majors must be adjusted to the demands of the world of work and respond to the emergence of disruptive innovation. Jokowi pointed out the importance of the role of higher education and the contributions of (social) scientists’ thinking in facing an era of ongoing changes. The President has thus called for education reform in Indonesia and expressed his hopes that the national education curriculum could be designed to be more flexible, effective and relevant.
The ‘catching up’ syndrome
Our higher education is indeed still apprehensive, both when compared to the higher education in neighboring countries and when viewed from its practical use in creating solutions to meet the nation’s various needs. Our higher education has long experienced disorientation and discourse in its operational progression over the past 20 years, largely leading to a vague idea of world-class competitiveness and/or higher education. The idea of competitiveness and obsessing over becoming a world-class higher education seem to have become the main goal, shifting the epicenter of national education from enriching the life of the nation. The Research, Technology and Higher Education Minister has even broached the idea of "importing" foreigners to head universities in pursuit of President Jokowi\'s directive to make Indonesia\'s higher education capable of competing at the world-class level.
Later, it will appear that the idea of a competitive and world-class higher education was like “shooting the moon”. First, the funds allocated for the Research, Technology and Higher Education Ministry that oversees higher education are miniscule compared to the grand intention to advance higher education. Because of the limited budget (Rp 41.3 trillion, or only 9.2 percent of the 2018 national education budget of Rp 444.1 trillion), the Research, Technology and Higher Education Ministry plans to reduce the number of programs in state universities.
Second, the rising number of academic fraud, including cases of several state and private university heads who are alleged of having fake diplomas, facilitating plagiarism, and running "fast-track" doctoral programs on campuses in the country’s capital and other major cities. Since the heads of state universities are elected to their positions by the university senate and the minister carries 35 percent of the vote, recent fraud cases involving state universities illustrate that the quality of the system and the integrity of human resources managing the state universities – both on campus and in the ministry – are not yet reliable. How can they move forward, compete and achieve world-class standards, if the fundamental aspects of our higher education institutes still resemble the culture of "snake markets", slithering and with much wheeling and dealing?
Third, the culture of some of our higher education institutes is contaminated by political and corporate traditions that paralyzes academic life and undermines the morality of some parts of the academic community. In electing the head and other high positions, for example, it is commonplace for the candidates to form “success teams”. The task of such success teams is to "lobby" various parties, including the ministry.
The elected leaders will later fill the posts below them based on an individual’s performance in the winning teams, and not based on professional capability. It is no wonder that the campuses develop "cliques" that prefer to create intrigue rather than produce academic papers. Several heads of higher education institutes also use their campuses for political maneuvering – regardless of their motivation or goals – by arbitrarily giving out honorary doctorates (honoris causa) and even bestowing the title of "professor" to government officials and strategic figures of political parties and other organizations.
The on-campus academic environment is also undermined by a growing corporate spirit. Instead of focusing on developing the academic culture as the basis for progress, the leaders of state universities spend most of their time thinking about about how to raise funds, including from (prospective) students and through developing shopping centers on university lands to achieve the highest status of "independent university" (especially in terms of funding) as required by the legislation. Therefore, the tuition at state universities have become prohibitively expensive. The government also seems to have provided an opportunity by setting a 30 percent quota for new students gained through independent channels, whose costs are arbitrarily decided by the state universities.
Fourth, the lecturers are considered more as "professional" employees rather than scholars and educators who are wholly devoted to scholarship and humanity, who thereby tend to be transactional. The scholarly activities of the lecturers are mostly pseudo-scientific and are undertaken to comply with the credits necessary to achieve or retain academic positions, such as a professorship, lured by the professional allowances and honorariums accorded to such positions. The position and allowance of a professorship is "given once": once it is given, it is for life. Only a few lecturers exist who continue to struggle and update their knowledge.
The various efforts made by Research, Technology and Higher Education Minister Mohammad Nasir and his ministry’s officials to correct the situation to try and improve the quality of state universities deserves appreciation. Among these efforts is updating universities’ data, as well as the closure of substandard universities that do not meet the lecturer-to-student ratio and preparing guidance and various policies on higher education curriculum in early 2017: the Research, Technology and Higher Education Minister Decree No. 19/2017 on the appointment and dismissal of state university heads; Decree No. 20/2017 on professional allowances and honorariums for professors; and its Revised Strategic Plan for 2015-2019.
It is said that these various policies, in particular those related with Decree No. 20/2017, led to a significant increase in academic papers at the beginning of October 2017, published within ASEAN or world-class publications (in the Directory of Open Access Journals, or DOAJ). This exhilarating bound forward must be appreciated and watched closely so that progress is sustained.
Ministerial decree No. 19/2017 makes an effort to realign the appointment of state university heads to alleviate deviations – the ministry is directly involved and includes outsiders from the nomination stage – so that aside from "consolidating" procedures, it mitigates institutional autonomy in the selection and appointment of candidates to the leadership position. In reality, this authority has been a loophole that "crooked" bureaucrats have used to intervene and broker their own candidates.
Meanwhile, the revisions to the 2015-1019 Strategic Plan have not yet instigated the paradigmatic shift needed to make higher education institutes more relevant and efficient as President Jokowi has expressed in his many speeches.
The existing gap between the nation’s needs and issues and higher education institutes’ output is rooted in our disregard of various norms, natural reality and culture in our nation-state. Normative values, such as "enriching the life of the nation", natural wealth and biodiversity, ethnicity and culture have yet to be elaborated upon in the context of the national education strategy. Education efforts have generally not shown a strong connection with the ideals of advancing prosperity or protecting the nation and its lifeblood, including its role and dignity on the world stage.
The management of our higher education institutes have been all too "academic", driven by the desire to escape "the catching-up syndrome" (according to Prof Anita of the University of Widya Mandala Surabaya, Kompas, 21/6/2014) and gain world recognition through academic publications in internationally accredited journals. That is the highest meaning and goal of the expectation of competitiveness and world-class standards, but has yet to be attained. As a result, our campuses seem cut off and dull, busy within their own worlds.
Contextual higher education
It has to be admitted that the morale of our higher education institutes seems to be hovering on a far-off horizon, not hanging high in the sky like a bright star, and without a real-life role model on earth. Making our higher education more effective and relevant will of course involve more than the instant diversification or simplification of our departments/programs of study into more specific, cost-effective ones as related ministries have attempted.
The President’s idea needs to interpreted as a political will to engage in a kind of copernican revolution that changes our perspective from an outward- to an inward-looking one in the vision and operation of our national education. Our higher education institutes must be transformed in their "academic" tendencies to take a more "pragmatic” approach in preparing skills and applied expertise for certain jobs, as legislation has required for as vocational and professional institutions (Higher Education Law No. 12/2012, Articles 15-17 ).
Realizing President Jokowi’s ideas cannot be rushed, because it demands the total, fundamental and gradual change in the concept of highger education. Total change also does not mean throwing out everything and starting over from scratch, but it also does not mean simple pruning.
Like transportation, our (higher) education has long been stuck in severe congestion. Therefore, in order to improve it, what is needed is the government’s serious dedication to build a variety of vital modes that can resolve the core problem and at the same time, build elements that link the various flows of the nation’s interests toward progress.
In its vision and mission, the Joko Widodo-Jusuf Kalla administration has pinpointed three main issues for the nation that should also guide the direction of education development, especially higher education: 1) decline of state authority; 2) weakening elements of the national economy; and 3) widespread intolerance and the national identity crisis.
These three major issues have basically arisen from the "abundance" of natural resources and the "drought" in our human resources. To address this, the President has created the nine priority agendas of Nawacita, which include improving the quality of life, overhauling the national character and strengthening social reform and restoration.
During the first three years of the Jokowi-Kalla government, we have truly witnessed the government\'s seriousness in implementing its agendas to address the various problems of congested transportation, especially through building new modes of transportation and toll roads both at sea and on land. Recently, we have witnessed the President\'s sincerity in developing the nation\'s mind. Let us hope.
Mohammad Abduhzen
Advisor, Paramadina Institute for Education Reform, University of Paramadina; Head of R&D, Executive Board, Indonesian Teachers Union (PGRI)
