Hundreds of Prospective Students Withdraw from State Universities in Central Java, Why?

The news of hundreds of prospective new students withdrawing after being accepted into state universities emerged during a meeting between House of Representatives Commission X and the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, and Technology. During the meeting, Commission X member Sofyan Tan questioned reports that 60,000 prospective students from the National Selection Based on Achievement (SNBP) pathway had failed to re-register or had withdrawn. He requested the ministry to conduct a thorough investigation into the matter. It is suspected that many prospective students who passed the SNBP and the National Selection Based on Test (SNBT) pathways did not complete their re-registration.

At Universitas Tidar (Untidar) in Magelang, hundreds of prospective students from the SNBP and SNBT pathways were recorded as having withdrawn. However, this number is considered small compared to the total number of students accepted. Untidar’s Vice Rector for Academic Affairs and Cooperation, Prof Suyitno, stated that 60 out of 936 prospective students from the SNBP pathway withdrew, representing only 6.4 percent. For the SNBT pathway, 347 out of 2,418 accepted students did not re-register, a rate of 14.4 percent. He noted that the university does not know the reasons for the withdrawals, as participants can simply choose not to re-register without providing an explanation. The vacant seats from the SNBP pathway will be added to the SNBT quota, and any remaining vacancies from the SNBT will be transferred to the independent admission pathway.

At Universitas Jenderal Soedirman (Unsoed) in Purwokerto, the rectorate confirmed that 70 out of 3,176 prospective students accepted through the SNBP pathway did not re-register. The Head of the Academic Department, Eko Sumantoso, stated that 97.7 percent of accepted candidates completed their registration, which he described as a good result. Unsoed does not impose sanctions on the schools of students who fail to re-register after being accepted through SNBP, but it does report the data to the central SNPMB committee.

Commission X member Sofyan Tan urged the ministry to investigate whether students withdrew because they were placed in the wrong study programme, accepted at another university they preferred, or, most worryingly, because they could not afford tuition despite the KIP Kuliah scholarship programme. The Chair of the SNPMB 2026 Team, Prof Dr Ir Eduart Wolok, clarified that the figure of 60,000 students not re-registering was inaccurate, explaining that this number represented approximately 10 percent of total withdrawals across all admission pathways in 2025, while the re-registration rate for the SNBP pathway alone stands at 92 percent.