T

he city of Yogyakarta is host to two Catholic universities and two Muhammadiyah universities. The presence of two higher education institutions of the same religious denomination and ideological persuasion, offering more or less similar courses in one locality is perhaps one demonstration of the unnecessary duplication of higher education service provision in this country.

Such duplication reflects the nation’s excessive number of higher education institutions. There are 4,446 higher education institutions in Indonesia serving approximately 5 million students.

More than half are specialized colleges, known as sekolah tinggi. Very few countries with populations similar to or bigger than Indonesia’s have this enormous number of institutions.

The US is perhaps among the exceptions, with more than 4,700 institutions for 15 million students. While the idea behind having such a large number of institutions in the US is to provide a wide variety of study options, geographical balance of service provision and unique learning experiences for students, the same cannot be said about Indonesia.

Our numerous institutions mostly concentrate on some “popular” programs and gravitate toward big cities in Java.

For instance, of the 24,126 study programs offered by the institutions, about a fifth are in education and approximately 10 percent are in Jakarta.

Given the sheer number of institutions, quality is difficult to guarantee. The National Accreditation Board for Higher Education (BAN-PT) is inundated with a backlog of accreditation applications for the study programs.

The recent establishment of independent accreditation agencies for specific fields, such as health, may help to ease the backlog.

Nevertheless, the task of improving the quality of these institutions is gargantuan, and the accreditation bodies may not have the required manpower and resources to do so.

Unsurprisingly, no Indonesian institutions fare well in global ranking systems and many are not delivering services on par with national requirements.

One key problem is the lack of qualified lecturers who have completed doctoral or PhD qualifications. There are 27,351 lecturers with PhD qualification for 24,126 study programs. Each study program has on average one lecturer possessing a PhD.

In reality, there are many study programs without a single lecturer with such a qualification. The thin spread of lecturers with PhDs among Indonesian institutions means that high quality research is difficult to produce.

Research intensive institutions around the world have a high concentration of PhD holding staff as this allows them to easily exchange research ideas and techniques, thus improving research quality.

Further, the large number of institutions means higher education services cannot be delivered efficiently. Rather than paying the salary of one rector, the Catholic and Muhammadiyah universities in Yogyakarta have to pay for two.

And the trickle down impact continues. They have to pay for two sets of academic and administrative staff and build two laboratory facilities.

The cost of this inefficiency eventually has to be borne by someone: either the government for the state-owned universities or the parents of students for private universities. Indonesians are paying expensive higher education fees for low quality education.

What solutions can the government provide to improve the quality and efficiency of higher education? First, as it has done before, the government should freeze the number of institutions and study programs, particularly if applications for new programs and institutions do not address the real needs of Indonesian human resources development.

This will also enable the accreditation bodies to catch up with the backlog. Nevertheless, freezing the number does not necessarily improve the ability to produce quality research and build an efficient higher education system.

Second, most importantly, the government should merge the small institutions into bigger and more comprehensive universities.

This policy is nothing new.

In the late 1980s, Australia introduced the Dawkins Revolution that merged numerous small colleges and institutes into several universities.

The reason was to improve the quality, diversity and equity of higher education services in Australia and improve international competitiveness.

 After close to 30 years, these newly merged Australian universities have achieved good international reputations.

For example, the University of Technology Sydney, a result of the merger of at least four colleges and institutes, now ranks 218 in the QS World Rankings, higher than any Indonesian university.

Indonesia could roll out a similar merger policy, beginning with specialized colleges, which only offer degree programs in very limited fields of study. These colleges often have weak management, unqualified staff and limited resources.

They could be merged with each other or with other universities to better enable their improvement, by pooling resources together and stopping duplication of services.

Merging only these specialized colleges will halve the excessive number of higher education institutions.

Afterward, the government may want to consider merging smaller universities with similar religious and ideological persuasions to increase efficiency and bring down the cost of private higher education.

With a smaller number will come greater ease of assuring quality and monitoring the delivery of services, which in the long run could improve the quality of higher education in Indonesia.
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The writer completed his PhD in higher education management at the Queensland University of Technology and lectures at Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia, Jakarta.