At the heart of the dispute was a decision made by ITB rector Reini Wirahadikusumah to issue a decree that revoked SBM ITB’s autonomous right to manage its own financial affairs. The move aimed to integrate the business school’s human capital, finance and remuneration system with the rest of the university.

The decree was issued in response to the Supreme Audit Agency’s findings in 2018, which ruled that SBM ITB’s authority to independently manage its financial affairs contravened the university’s 2013 statutes.

Monday’s agreement, announced after ITB leadership spoke with SBM ITB lecturers, ended a strike initiated by the SBM ITB Lecturer Forum in response to the decree.

The strike was announced on March 8, with the lecturers saying they would neither hold classes nor provide other academic services, and advised students to self-study, a move they said was part of the “rationalization of academic services".

“During the two-and-a-half-hour meeting, we agreed that […] a group of SBM ITB’s lecturers will not [continue] their strike,” ITB spokesperson Naomi Haswanto said on Monday, adding that there would be follow up meetings to further discuss issues left unresolved from Monday’s meeting.

Echoing Naomi, SBM ITB professor Sudarso Kaderi Wiryono, who is also part of the SBM ITB Lecturer Forum, said all academic services at the school would return to normal, including teaching, mentoring and the admission of new students.

“Basically, with the agreement, there will be a negotiation [between SBM ITB and ITB leadership],” Sudarso said. “Starting today [Monday], all [academic services] will return to normal.”

A team consisting of representatives from ITB’s management, SBM ITB lecturers, as well as parents and alumni, will be formed to negotiate a new arrangement that would refer to an ITB rector’s decree from 2003, which serves as the legal basis of SBM ITB’s founding and its autonomy, Sudarso said.

The team is expected to complete the negotiation process in May, Sudarso added.

Meanwhile, Sudarso added that the ITB rectorate had agreed to annul its recently issued regulation, allowing the management of SBM ITB to refer to the 2003 decree to manage its own financial affairs.

Sudarso said SBM ITB’s quality of education and human resources, including its ability to attract and employ high-quality lecturers and to invite foreign lecturers and entrepreneurs as speakers, would be negatively affected if the ITB rectorate revoked the school’s financial autonomy.

"A business school without guest lecturers from industries and businesses is like teaching business [using only] textbooks,” Sudarso said.

Students’ parents welcomed the settlement and hoped that any arrangements agreed by the university’s authorities would not have a negative impact on the school’s quality of education.

“Whatever the [upcoming] policy, the high-quality education at SBM ITB must not be compromised,” Ali Nurdin, whose child enrolled in SBM ITB last year, told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

“We hope that this [negotiation] process can continue in accordance with the principles of transparency, participatory and accountable so that the education process at ITB can resume as normal.”