Leading universities initiate reforms

Ardimas Sasdi, Staff Writer, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta, ardimas@thejakartapost.com

As part of the long-awaited initiative expected to begin the process of reforming higher education, large state universities have established academic quality assurance mechanisms to help improve the quality of their institutions.

The launch of the Audit Academic Agency (BAA) without much fanfare last year by the University of Indonesia in Jakarta, Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta and the Bandung Institute of Technology in West Java, demonstrated the determination of the administrators of those institutions to provide a better education.

This is encouraging, particularly given the public concern over the deteriorating quality of national education, especially at the university level, and calls on the government to take concrete measures to bring university graduates up to the same level as their peers from foreign universities, so they can compete at the regional and international level.

The tasks of the audit agency will include helping the universities accomplish their main missions of teaching, research and community service, by laying down ground rules and criteria for quality assurance.

However, the scope of the duties of the agency is wider than that of the National Accreditation Body at the Ministry of National Education, which ranks state and private universities, because it can make recommendations to rectors on the management, opening, merger and closing of certain programs.

The establishment of the audit agency, the concept of which is new to many involved in higher education here, was inspired by the success of large universities in developed countries, in maintaining and improving the quality of their graduates.

The concept of an audit agency dates back to the 1990s, when universities in the U.S. and Europe saw the urgency of building effective control assurance mechanisms like the ones in businesses, where the quality of products can be measured accurately based on a set of fixed criteria.

The University of Indonesia placed a big burden on the agency, established in mid-2002, as seen from the qualification of its senior lecturers from almost all departments. The agency is directly responsible to the rector.

The agency has the flexibility to carry out its tasks, such as forming ad hoc committees to collect and analyze data.

The results of the agency's reports, which focus on the process of transferring knowledge from lecturers to students, were used by the universities to make improvements as part of their accountability to their stakeholders -- students, parents and the community.

Amri Marzali, the current chairman of BAA at the University of Indonesia, is optimistic the agency will be able to help the university improve the quality of its graduates. But he admitted that the road to achieving this goal would be long and bumpy, citing budgetary constraints as one of the main problems.

The formation of the agency also entails a shift in the mind- set of lecturers and administrators as the prime movers of the university, from civil servants notorious for their lack of professionalism to "true" professionals who have a strong commitment to excel at their jobs.

The concept also demands a major review in the salary scale of lecturers, which has been hampered by the bureaucratic procedures regulating civil servants' wages.

A professor with more than 30 years teaching experience at Airlangga University recently said he received only Rp 2.8 million (US$360) per month, compared to the between 5,000 and 6,000 Malaysian dollars received by senior lecturers in Malaysia or the US$1,500 received by junior lecturers in South Korea.

The salaries of lecturers at private universities vary from one institution to the next, but the amount is not much more that what is received by lecturers at state universities.

Over the past few years, the educational sector has received greater freedom in managerial and academic independence, thanks to the reform era following the downfall of former president Soeharto in 1998, but there has been no significant change in the welfare of lecturers.

The changes in higher education have so far been superficial and restricted to a shift in the status of some universities to state-owned incorporated entities, part of a government pilot project to make large state-run universities fully independent in their finances and academic management by 2010. Some universities now also have more of a say in the election of rectors, but the final say on who will become rector still rests with the government.

The universities also need to protect the students' rights through the establishment of an Ombudsman Commission, which would offer neutral assistance in situations where students feel they have been treated unfairly or need help with procedural or academic problems.

Universities also face the challenge of promoting transparency in financial reports, to improve their image as centers of excellence and to build a philanthropic tradition among the people, as commonly found in many Western countries.

Most Indonesian universities do not compile financial reports, and if they do they don't publish them in the media.

Donations from philanthropists could become a potentially important source of income for universities, especially with the smaller budget earmarked by the government and meager income from tuition fees and grants.

The endeavor to improve the quality of higher education through the introduction of professional management control and quality assurance mechanisms, the upgrading of campus facilities and an improved commitment to professionalism by lecturers must be part of a holistic agenda aimed at making universities financially healthy, so that they can hire the very best lecturers and administrators.