Govt committed to liberalizing education sector
Zakki P. Hakim and Sri Wahyuni, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta/Yogyakarta
The new government remains committed to liberalizing the country's education sector in line with the World Trade Organization plan, despite protests from local university rectors, who fear they will not be able to compete with top universities from other countries that would be allowed to operate here.
But Minister of Trade Mari Elka Pangestu said that the government would take into account the condition of the local education sector in talks with the WTO on how far the country would open the sector to foreign competition and on the time schedule.
"It is not a matter of refusing to liberalize the education sector, but a matter of committing to when and how far we will open up our education sector," Mari told reporters after an economic ministers meeting on Tuesday.
She was responding to an earlier appeal from local universities calling on the new government to refuse the inclusion of tertiary education services in WTO liberalization talks.
"Universities are not a business commodity that can be liberalized in such a way. Apart from their task of transferring and developing knowledge and sciences, they also have the task of maintaining and developing the nation.
"How can they carry these holy tasks if they are regulated under free trade frameworks within the WTO?" wondered Gadjah Mada University (UGM) Rector Sofian Effendi.
The Forum of Indonesian Rectors (FRI) and the Rectors' Assembly of the State-Owned Universities (MR-PTN) are preparing a declaration of refusal in a bid to "save national education from the negative effect of globalization."
The liberalization of the education sector is part of the WTO's plan to open up the global services sector in a bid to boost investment and trade in the sector. It is stipulated under the General Agreement of Trade in Services, which among others provides options for foreign universities to open campuses in Indonesia, or foreign lecturers to teach in Indonesian universities.
"We could allow foreigners to open universities, or let expatriates become lecturers here," said Mari, who is also an economist with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and in the past had been active in WTO talks.
Mari said that the Indonesian government had a deadline until May next year to submit its commitment on the liberalization of the overall service sector to the WTO.
"For the time being, we are having intensive talks, not only with people from the education sector, but also from all sectors of services, to find out how Indonesia would want its commitment to look like," she said.
"Having a commitment does not mean we open the sector tomorrow. There will be a time frame, depending on the readiness of the respective sectors," she added.
Meanwhile, Sofian claimed that the inclusion of the education sector in WTO talks was a maneuver by the U.S. and Australia to obtain greater business opportunities in developing countries like those in Southeast Asia.
He gave the example of a 2003 survey by Tong University in Shanghai, China and not a single university in the region was included in the world's top 500 universities.
"The U.S. and Australia see the gap as a business opportunity, thus they lobbied for the inclusion of tertiary education as a service needed to be regulated by WTO," Sofian explained.
Separately, the ministry's head of sub-directorate of multilateral cooperation on services, Herliza, said that the country would benefit greatly from the education liberalization drive.
"The competition would force local universities to improve their quality. And in the end, the people who would be benefited the most would be students, who will get a better education," Herliza told The Jakarta Post.
She said that if Indonesia opted to shut the doors to foreign universities or teachers, local students would go to neighboring countries, where branches of top schools like Harvard were accepted.