T

he Yogyakarta provincial administration should close down businesses offering services to write theses and dissertations as they could damage the quality of higher education graduates in the province.

“The provincial administration should be able to control it. Currently, no institution has the authority to act on the matter,” Yogyakarta Education Council chairman Wuryadi told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

Wuryadi said that thesis-writing services have been available in Yogyakarta, widely known as the education city, and its surrounding areas for a long time. Unless something was done about them, their presence could severely damage the quality of tertiary education graduates in the region, he added.

“The education council does not have the authority to close them. We can only provide advocacy including bringing this issue up in various discussion forums,” said Wuryadi, who is also a professor at Yogyakarta State University (UNY).

Wuryadi said that thesis supervisors should be serious about their jobs. “They have to follow the thesis-writing process very intensely and not just hand out the final result,” he said, adding that control lay with respective study programs and departments.

Similar expectations were expressed by Farah Fuadona, an undergraduate student at the Indonesian Islamic University (UII) Yogyakarta, who is majoring in communications and currently completing her dissertation.

She said students who used the services of such firms were just lazy and did not want to encounter difficulties in finishing their final task.

Thesis services can be easily found in a number of places in Yogyakarta, especially near large campuses. They normally use small kiosks to conduct their business and put signboards out front saying they offer thesis “consultations”.

Such businesses can also be found in classified ads in local newspapers. In Friday’s edition of the Harian Jogja daily, for example, there were at least four ads offering such services. When the Post rang one of them, a man on the other end of the phone cited a price of Rp 3 million (US$308.89) for an undergraduate thesis on international relations for Gadjah Mada University (UGM).

Separately, Yogyakarta Provincial Education, Youth and Sports Agency head Baskara Aji said that he had once coordinated with the local police and universities on the issue.

However, he said no firm action had so far been taken such as, for example, closing down the businesses.

Baskara said that the agency called on all students not to use such services while, at the same time, insisting that lecturers should devote more time to supervising the theses being written by their students.