Managing Higher Education: Surviving Without Mortgaging Quality

There are two university leadership meetings that are usually the most tense. First, the accreditation preparation meeting, when all units are asked to work hard to meet or even exceed standards. Documents are checked, indicators are scrutinised, performance evidence is collected, and everything is directed towards one highly coveted word: excellence.

Second, the new student admissions meeting. In the same room, the tone of idealism shifts to a colder calculation. How many students have registered? Is the income sufficient to pay lecturers and education staff? Can the campus still afford to improve laboratories, build digital systems, fund research, strengthen student services, and prepare for the future?

These two meetings illustrate the irony of our higher education system. On one hand, universities are required to continuously improve quality. On the other, many campuses must struggle to survive. This is where the great dilemma arises: how to maintain academic honour when financial resilience is increasingly under pressure?

This dilemma is not merely an internal campus anxiety. The 2025 Higher Education Statistics from the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, and Technology show a serious signal. The number of private universities under the ministry decreased from 3,044 in 2019/2020 to 2,713 in 2024/2025.

The number of registered students at private universities also fell from 4,674,889 in 2023/2024 to 4,580,141 in 2024/2025. In the same period, the national dropout figure reached 289,670 students, and 73.81 per cent of them came from private universities.

These figures must not be read merely as administrative statistics. They are a symptom of resilience. Private universities, which have long shouldered most of the burden of national higher education access, are facing a double pressure: competition to recruit new students and the demand to meet increasingly complex quality standards.

The problem is that the financing model of most universities still relies on tuition fees. When the number of new students declines, the entire quality structure is shaken.

Research is cut. Lecturer development is postponed. Laboratory maintenance becomes a burden. Information systems are not updated. In fact, on some campuses, quality assurance turns into a documentation exercise ahead of accreditation, rather than a living, daily culture.

At this point, the greatest danger is not just that campuses lack students. The more serious danger is when campuses begin to treat students solely as a source of income. Promotions become more aggressive than curriculum renewal. Tuition fee discounts are more prominent than learning quality. New buildings are easier to show off than academic culture. Accreditation is pursued as a title, not as a mirror for improvement.