Legislators told the public Monday not to resist the nearly complete bill on educational legal entities, claiming it would not give rise to "neo-capitalism" or "neo-liberalism" in the country's education system.
Anwar Arifin, deputy head of the House of Representatives' Commission X, which oversees education, culture, tourism and sports, said the bill would "side with poor students" and not against them, citing an article on funding.
He said the article obliged educational institutions to give at least 20 percent of their seats to students with "potential academic capacities but... financially underprivileged" and help them with scholarships.
Anwar, a Golkar Party member and head of the team formulating the wording of the bill, said the regulation would apply equally to both state and private educational entities.
"With the latest draft, NGOs should no longer protest the bill," he said.
Fellow Golkar legislator, Ferdiansyah, said the public did not have to worry about the bill turning educational institutions into business entities.
"Business motives of seeking profit through education have been blocked with this bill," he added.
Ferdiansyah said the bill upheld the principles of, among others, nonprofit, autonomy, accountability and transparency in the management of educational institutions.
Commission X urged the government to release the latest draft of the bill to the public, saying the intense rejection by many groups showed a lack of information in the development of the bill's deliberation.
The latest draft of the bill, completed Monday by the House's steering committee on the bill, limits the amount of fees state educational institutions can charge students to a maximum of one-third of operating costs.
The government and the institutions will have to jointly finance the remaining costs, including for those for investment. The funding split between the two will depend on the educational institutions' financial capacities.
"More established universities like UI (University of Indonesia) and ITB (Bandung Institute of Technology) may have to finance one-third of operating costs and the government the other third; while universities like IKIP (Teachers Training Institute) may have to finance only 10 percent of operating costs, with the rest becoming the government's responsibility," Anwar said.
He added this financing regulation applied only to state educational institutions, not private ones.
The three-year deliberation of the educational legal entity bill should have ended Monday, with all factions attending Monday's session voicing their final approval to all articles in the bill.
However, National Education Minister Bambang Sudibyo insisted on adding additional articles on the management of educational entities, once again forcing the House to delay the bill's endorsement.
Bambang argued the last draft of the bill was not clear about power-sharing structures between different stakeholders in universities.
