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Questioning autonomy in higher education
The recent debate on a judicial review filed with the Constitutional Court against Law No
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he recent debate on a judicial review filed with the Constitutional Court against Law No. 12/ 2012 on higher education has spawned concerns among the country’s intellectuals over the autonomy of higher education. The law has been contested by six students from Andalas University who said that their access to university had been impeded.
If the Constitutional Court annuls this law, it is feared that the autonomy of higher education in Indonesia will be at stake.
The concern over the autonomy of higher education is reminiscent of the previous revocation of Law on legal educational institutions (BHP), which at that time similarly sparked heated debate among academics and education pundits.
While the notion of autonomy in higher education has become a popular catchphrase, it is has never been perceived with uniformity. There is no such consensus, even among intellectuals, as to what constitutes autonomy in higher education.
The notion of autonomy, unless implemented with precision, can be subject to semantic manipulations that are at the whims of the power holders of educational institutions. If related to an institutional and bureaucratic context, it is clearly not a neutral word. It is a word loaded with ulterior meanings.
Construed from the perspective of the technocratic logic of an educational institution, autonomy signifies the idea of full control in managing universities and in designing policies related to educational activities.
Autonomy in this sense tries to disconnect the management of an institution from state intervention.
Yet, autonomous educational institutions are not free from flaws. The policies they impose may not benefit stakeholders (especially students) and are not amendable to their interest and needs, as these policies are the by-products of ideological and institutional logic to which educational staff, students, and teachers must accede.
It is no surprise that clashes — which often end in violence — between university rectors and students occurred in many, if not most, universities.
Autonomy, however, can be understood from the perspective of a pure academic logic, which emphasizes the spirit of lehrfreiheit (freedom to teach) and lernfreiheit (freedom to learn) — the well-known slogan long preserved by the University of Berlin. Educational institutions should be autonomous under this perspective, in that academic freedom is nurtured and the habits of mind such as inquisitiveness, persistence, creativity, responsibility, and imagination are highly respected.
In contrast to the former notion of autonomy, which has the tendency of favoring the rigidity of technocratic reasoning and ideology, the latter notion allows fluidity and flexibility, and is not predetermined and imposed upon those who are undertaking educational activities.
It seems that the imminent annulment of the higher education law may considerably dilute the autonomy (in the former sense) of higher education, as has been enthusiastically voiced by the country’s intellectuals.
The concern here is plausible because without the law, autonomy with the technocratic logic doesn’t hold sway and has no mutability in the presence of conflict and disruption.
It is resistant to changes and by hook or crook tries to conserve constancy for the sake of maintaining the vested interests and the constellation of structural power of elites in educational institution.
But autonomy from the perspective of the academic logic is fluid, not seeing things as always remaining constant in different circumstances. With or without the law, it may not be distorted and can surely withstand efforts which will disrupt it. Because it valorizes the habits of mind, any disruption will be appropriated rather than summarily rejected.
Thus, given the vacuous notion of autonomy, the bogey of losing autonomy of higher education should by no means cause us to succumb to unnecessary and counterproductive politics of education and to lose sight of the long-standing academic beacon of lehrfreiheit and lernfreiheit, which have been instilled into those undertaking educational activities in most universities in the US and European countries.
On the face of it, it would be much more productive if we intellectuals were concerned instead over how the tradition of nurturing the habits of mind among our students can be sustained rather than be overwhelmed by the apprehension of the judicial review of higher education law.
The writer is an associate professor at Atma Jaya Catholic University and chief editor of the Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching.
