Academic culture seems absent from our schools

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): When in a seminar on academic culture a participant asked, "What is academic culture?" I was stunned. How could someone participate in a seminar on academic culture without knowing what it is?

My worry was somewhat diminished when I discovered that among the thirty-odd participants, there were one or two others who also did not seem to understand what academic culture was.

Since everyone else seemed paralyzed by the participant's question, I volunteered to answer, saying: "Academic culture is basically a set of values that regulate the common behavior of members of any learning community."

That was the simplest explanation I could offer at the time.

I elaborated on my answer by saying that as a place for advanced learning, a university should strive to be a place of continuous enrichment of knowledge, and at the same time guard existing knowledge against generalizations and opinions that are characterized by methodological obscurities.

Another participant gave the following explanation to stress the need for a stronger academic culture in our universities: "Academic culture in Indonesian universities needs to be strengthened. If we fail to do this, other countries that constantly reinvigorate their academic cultures will push us further into a corner.

"Our poor performance in science and science-based endeavors is the result of our neglecting to continuously foster academic culture. The silence of our universities in facing assertions that contain blatant lies is an undeniable fact concerning our weakness in this case."

Some of the participants seemed offended by this explanation. They asked for evidence concerning the weakness of our academic culture. Patience ran thin with the rest of the participants and they volunteered to provide their own evidence.

This included our low scientific productivity, lack of sincere scientific debate in our scientific communities, and our lack of courage to reject opinions that are not supported by both convincing evidence and sound reasoning.

Those who took the position that our academic life was sound seemed to genuinely believe that whatever shortcomings there were in our institutions of higher learning, they had nothing to do with academic culture.

Furthermore, they seemed to believe that academic culture was merely an intellectual game played by academic snobs.

It became obvious at this point that the participants were seated in two different camps.

Those who were sincerely concerned about the low level of academic life in society were in the majority.

The others were those who naively believed we had done our best in running our universities, and therefore should not be blamed for any shortcomings that might still exist there.

This group considered any comparison to universities in developed countries unfair.

The debate between the two groups was at times very heated. But highly experienced people managed to control the situation and steered the seminar into deliberation about the cause of the sorry affair of our academic culture and the steps needed to be taken to remedy the situation.

Two main factors were mentioned as the principal cause of our low academic culture: the nation's culture, which was described as "the mental map of the nation", and the management style of our universities.

A foreign professor in social science research methodology explained that Indonesian culture, as he knew it, contained characteristics that were not conducive to the promotion of scientific inquiry.

The reluctance of many Indonesian scientists, for instance, to be engaged in rigorous scientific debate constitutes one such obstacle. The question now is how are Indonesian academicians going to tackle the problem. Are they going to modify this cultural condition for the sake of the nation's scientific progress or are they going to give up on the idea of promoting science at Indonesian universities?

On the managerial side, the general opinion was that within Indonesian universities bureaucracy has assumed a dominating attitude with academic staff. This means that in Indonesian universities, bureaucratic culture is more powerful than academic culture.

University bureaucracy exists not to serve and promote academic life, but to regulate it. Bureaucratic rules carry more power than academic principles. Against this backdrop it should not be surprising to anyone that academic culture cannot find firm roots in our universities.

The discussion on ways and means that have to be taken to strengthen academic culture in Indonesian universities was very rich and varied. Throughout the debate, two ideas came forth very clearly: that Indonesian universities should be given more autonomy and deregulation should be implemented immediately.

One example of deregulation that was discussed concerned the policy of Tridharma Perguruan Tinggi, or the regulation which states that every university teaching staff member should be involved in three activities: teaching, research and public service.

Many participants argued that this policy should be revised and should be viewed as a policy regulating the behavior of institutions and not of individual members of universities. To require that each member of a university be equally competent in teaching, research, and public service would only make faculty members become mediocre lecturers, mediocre researchers and mediocre public servants.

While listening to the discussion, I was thinking of the many regulations that have been imposed on our universities since 1963. I asked myself, "What kind of institution do we want to make of our universities?"

I could not help but think of what Henri Frederic Amiel (1821- 1861) wrote in 1852. He said, "The test of every religious, political, and educational system is the man which it forms. If a system injures intelligence, it is bad. If it injures character, it is vicious. If it injures the conscience, it is criminal."

Another thought was fleeting in my mind. It was in 1987, I think, that the Ministry of Education and Culture legally adopted the policy of granting academic freedom to our universities.

Why do Indonesian universities fail to strengthen their academic mettle and performance after enjoying academic freedom for ten years? I am inclined to think that academic freedom without academic culture is meaningless.

The writer is an observer of social and cultural affairs.