Higher Education and Intellectualism

Indonesia’s higher education sector has long been the subject of debate as policymakers weigh how many campuses should exist, and what philosophy should guide their development. MOHAMAD Nasir, Minister of Research, Technology, and Higher Education for 2014–2019, once proposed cutting the number of higher education institutions in Indonesia. He argued that roughly 4,000 institutions at that time were bloated relative to China, a country with more than a billion people. For Indonesia, with a population not yet reaching 300 million, Nasir estimated an overcapacity of around 2,000 higher education institutions. Nevertheless, despite the change of minister from Nadiem Makarim to Brian Yuliarto (Minister of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology), the number of national universities has remained relatively stagnant at around 4,200 institutions. This figure raises critical questions: whether the establishment of campuses is underpinned by a robust philosophical foundation for education, or whether it is driven by pragmatic targets such as the crude participation rate (APK) and responses to short‑term market needs. The expansion of higher education in recent years cannot be disentangled from these two variables. APK served as a key indicator of accessibility and inclusivity of higher education, with a linear logic: more universities, greater capacity, more students, and ultimately higher national APK. This logic is especially applied by public universities with legal entity status (PTN-BH) and the Open University (UT). In the past five years, these two entities have often faced complaints from private higher education institutions (PTS) due to their dominance in recruiting students. Meanwhile, among PTS themselves, competition has become fiercer—moving toward a red ocean—amid the emergence of new PTS in various regions driven by the same policy rationales. The policy framed by such logic gave rise to the phenomenon of higher education massification, which in some sociology of education literature is criticised through the concept of an overeducated society. The concept refers to a situation where expansion of higher education creates a phenomenon of a ‘surfeit of educated people’, but on the other hand—besides causing asymmetry with the socio‑economic structure—its dimension of character formation is neglected. Therefore, there is reason to question whether there is a robust philosophical underpinning behind the development of higher education in Indonesia. This doubt does not arise without reason. In policy practice, ideological orientations of higher education are often difficult to trace consistently. Policy directions appear more determined by the subjective preferences of changing ministers than by a grand vision of education systematically derived from a particular philosophical stance. The policy narrative shift from Merdeka Belajar in the Nadiem Makarim era to the Kampus Berdampak paradigm under the current minister, for example, resembles little more than an administrative and rhetorical slogan shift—intended to attract public attention that there is something different about higher education policy. In this article, philosophy is understood as a mode of thought that, from classical times to the present, consistently emphasises radical, critical, systematic, and universal thinking to reveal the essence of something. In the context of education, to think philosophically means to ask radically what is the true essence—the most important thing—of education itself. The Enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant left a fundamental answer that helps understand the essence of education, including at the tertiary level, that philosophical thinking ultimately culminates in the most challenging domain: man (Was ist der Mensch?). TRAP OF VOCATIONALISATION The question ‘What is man?’ posed by Immanuel Kant is the central issue that education must answer, given that all educational activities revolve around humans. Is our higher education really guided by this fundamental question? It would sound naive to answer that question as if one wishes to negate the view of humans in our higher education. In recent years, higher education has moved to prepare students to enter the workforce quickly. To accelerate this process, the government as regulator sets the ideal absorption timeframe—no more than six months after graduation—and a wage level not below the regional minimum in the area where graduates work. In the Nadiem Makarim era, under MBKM, the government designed a flagship programme of internships in the industry to push students to gain work experience as early as possible. When higher education is steered almost entirely to meet the needs of the labour market (market-driven), the academic orientation slowly shifts toward a vocational pattern, though formally it remains an academic education. This shift reflects a narrowing view of humanity, as if students are primarily understood as potential workers who must be quickly absorbed by the market. It is at this point that it is important to reopen and understand the thinking of Edward Shils, the sociologist and Chicago School founder, about the sacred role of higher education in his classic work The Academic Ethics. ETHOS OF INTELLECTUALISM Although published nearly half a century ago, Edward Shils’s ideas remain relevant for navigating the direction of higher education so that it does not drift too far from its sacred role. Higher education