T

he current hullabaloo over the selling of bogus academic degrees allegedly by certain higher educational institutions in the country is hardly startling.

In fact, revelations of such illicit practices are only the tip of the iceberg, and serve as evidence of an academic disgrace that has long tarnished the image of the county'€™s education system.

In retrospect, it is no longer a secret that the country'€™s politicians hold fake degrees in order to display their status as competent people'€™s representatives in the legislature; academicians plagiarize so as to get promoted to a higher academic position.

Similarly, students have their theses and dissertations written by '€œservice providers'€, who offer assistance to the former.

The higher the people'€™s demand for easy access to academic success and for displaying their social status, the less likely the hunt for fake diplomas can be curbed.

It is for the above reasons that we need to applaud Research and Technology and Higher Education Minister Muhammad Nasir for his move to monitor and evaluate the National Standard of Higher Education (SN Dikti).

The evaluation of the SN Dikti is expected to bring winds of change amid the tarnished image of higher education in the country. To this end, the legacy of former education and culture minister Muhammad Nuh on the requirement of international publications for academia ought to be implemented soon, so as to avoid dishonest academic practices from recurring.

Specifically, the essence of the policy can be summed up as follows: Undergraduate students must publish their work in either non-accredited or accredited national journals, master degree students in national accredited journals and doctoral students in reputable international journals.

As publication is mandatory and bear, more credits than other required course work, without it both undergraduate and graduates students will not be able to complete their studies.

Many, however, criticized Nuh'€™s radical move as unmindful and unrealistic, given that most Indonesian students are not poised to publish internationally. A lack of writing skills among students is often imputed to an oral tradition prevalent in our culture.

Moreover, it has been repeatedly articulated that getting published in an international journal is such an arduous feat that it would take many additional years for students to complete their studies. This fear is not without reason, however.

Prior to being granted permission to publish, a manuscript must undergo a strict blind review, which normally takes longer to process.

Once the review processes have been completed, it will be resent to the author(s) for revision (minor or major), and once the revision is done, the manuscript will be passed to a copy editor for detailed editing. Clearly, all of these processes cannot be completed overnight.

Apart from this, Nuh'€™s policy doesn'€™t take into consideration the fact that few thesis and dissertation supervisors, most of whom hold a PhD degree, have published their own research in reputable international journals.

This unfortunate condition has created a further obstacle for the students to have their works published in the journals. Thus, one wonders how such a policy could oblige students to publish, whereas most of their supervisors have never had their works published in the journals, let alone been quoted as a reference by other scholars.

Despite the demerits of the Nuh policy, the country'€™s current education practices and global forces of professionalism among academia compels us to envision the policy as something that needs to be wholeheartedly welcomed, as it would bring benefits to higher education institutions here.

Not only does such a policy make academia psych themselves up to face global competitiveness, it can also be used as one of the measures for quality assurance of a higher education institution.

With the rampant selling of fake diplomas involving a number of higher education institutions here of late, it is highly likely that '€” as a result of the current monitoring and evaluation system '€” the incumbent minister Nasir will slowly but surely impose the '€œpublish or perish'€ policy on the academic community.

If this happens, academics working in higher education institutions will have no choice but to prepare themselves for writing for the consumption of the academic community.

As such, not only will they be able to disseminate their works for the good of the public as a form of their accountability, but they can also engage in healthy academic exchange.