Indonesian universities under threat
Updated
The academic future is not bright for some of Indonesia's universities. There are warning bells that at least half of the country's schools provide poor quality education. And without government help, a third of Indonesia's universities will have to shut their doors.
Presenter: Sonia Randhawa
Speaker: Surhayadi, Chairman of the Indonesian Association of Private Higher Education Institutions, APTISI; Fasli Jalal, Director-General of Higher Education, Indonesian Ministry of Education; Ismet Fanany, senior lecturer in education, Deakin University.
RANDHAWA: Indonesia's private university system is huge. Nearly 25 million people attend one of 2,800 universities, colleges or schools - dwarfing the 720 thousand studying at public universities.
But Chairman of the Indonesian Association of Private Higher Education Institutions - or APTISI , Suharyadi, says these institutions are in trouble.
SURHAYADI: There is this problem in quality, the graduate is not good quality, it's very difficult to compete with the others. and the institutions don't have much money to hire higher the good lecturers, they don't have money to build laboratories.
RANDHAWA: Fasli Jalal is the Director-General of Higher Education in the Indonesian Ministry of Education. He says the Ministry is already providing support.
JALAL: We are providing the scholarship equally to all PTS. For the lecturer, this year in 2008, out of 1100 scholarships provided, close to 70 per cent are being got by the PTS lecturers. We also provided ICT program, as well as infrastructure.
RANDHAWA: PTS refer to private institutions, PTN to public institutions.
Ismet Fanany is a senior lecturer in education at Deakin University, specialising in Indonesian education. He says these closures could be a good thing.
FANANY: The closure might have some positive impact on higher education as a whole. For example, it now draws attention to the poor quality of many these private universities. They are going to be able to eliminate now some of those universities that do not perform even close to the standard, but also it draws attention to some universities that are doing perhaps still not up to the point, and perhaps it will encourage them to improve their situation in their own university.
RANDHAWA: He says there are broader problems facing higher education in Indonesia.
FANANY: Only about 16-17 per cent of the students who finished the high schools actually can go on to university, even though they want a place at the university. So there is a major challenge for Indonesians. And the other thing of course is the equity issue, equity of access. A certain group of Indonesians do not have access for the reasons that they belong to that group. For example, they are a lower socio-economic people.
RANDHAWA: Are their broader, social impacts likely because of this?
FANANY: You hear people say, for example, in Indonesia more and more that the rich can become richer and part of the explanation of that is that the rich also get access to very, very competitive place at a university and so university becomes really more than a good place for training. It becomes a prestige kind of institution and becomes usually a symbol to get a better opportunity.
RANDHAWA: However, Mr Jalal says the Ministry is tackling the problem of equity.
JALAL: We are providing scholarship, This year is around 170,000. Next year we are going to add 70,000 more. We are allowing them to get free seat for the entrance examination and if they pass, they will be welcomed by the scholarship and next year we are going to go roughly 250,000 altogether.
