Revitalizing higher education
By Freddy Kirana
JAKARTA (JP): Empowerment of institutions is essential for the improvement of Indonesia's higher education system and practices.
Dr. Nirwan Idrus says in his two articles, RI education system needs a revolution, printed in The Jakarta Post's Sept. 3 and Sept. 4 editions that to improve the quality of education, Indonesia should revamp its education system fundamentally because it is not efficient and effective, and it cannot keep up with the pace of the development of science and technology in a rapidly changing world.
In fact his discussion is not on the education system but merely on one aspect of education management -- empowerment, an emerging issue in (business) management. What he is saying is that bottom-up management would generate more favorable results (creativity as he put it) in the fields of learning, teaching and research. It is undeniably a novel idea.
A system of (education) management is far more complex than leadership. Human resources, innovation, communications and many other management functions and/or issues are also important. Empowerment is indeed one of the issues or techniques to enhance effectiveness, but it is not limited to effectiveness and efficiency.
Is quality assurance a good example for Indonesia? Nirwan argues that reform which encompasses fundamental changes of management, tradition, customs and attitude, is a must because it will improve "quality, efficiency, effectiveness and access".
This Total Quality Management (TQM) philosophy is in fact not a new issue in either business management or academia. However, the example drawn from Australia's Unified Higher Education System or the National Unified System (NUS) in Higher Education may be misleading.
As a consultant who has worked in Australia, Nirwan should have been aware of the pros and cons of the NUS and Australia's quality assurance issues. It is not surprising to find that many Australian educators, experts and academics are not at all amused by the idea of reform.
Debate on the real intention put forward by the federal government (Australia's former minister of education, employment and training, John Dawkins) is still raging -- should the reform generate dollars or improve quality?
Many consider that the government arguing using a set of nomenclatures derived from business lacks a shared discourse, and that no evidence has shown that academic staff have become excellent teachers or become keen researchers and that they have fulfilled their roles.
It is true that Australian reform of higher education was introduced at the time of the Australian economic crisis which might be compared with what Indonesians are now experiencing. It is also correct that it has generated income and employment and better access for higher education both for Australians and overseas students.
But there has been no evidence that quality, effectiveness and efficiency have been achieved. Australian higher education is more market driven, while the government keeps cutting funds for institutions. Making the education system more market driven than before the reform does not automatically constitute better quality.
Quality assurance in fact has also brought a sort of "unfairness" in the distribution of funds to the 36 universities under the NUS, notably that all are government-funded. The smaller and newer "Dawkinian" universities (named after the former minister of education, employment and training, John Dawkins) have to compete with the older big boys for pieces of an ever decreasing pie.
The concepts of quality management, development, improvement and a set of such related words have been in business management textbooks for decades. Empowerment and re-engineering, for example, are concepts and/or approaches employed to improve management quality in an organization. These two concepts have recently been trumpeted by management experts and scholars.
TQM and/or quality management, proposed by scholars like Dr. Deming and Juran, normally set a number of requirements to be met if fundamental changes are to occur in a business organization. Continuous improvement is sought through the Plan-Do-Study-Act (Design-Make-Sell-Test in service-redesign) cycling-model TQM, as Deming asserts, can be also applied in service industries, such as mail and education.
Deming's TQM emphasizes improvement of quality without sacrificing improvement of productivity. In TQM, quality is a way of life, (Deming 1986: Out of the Crisis, Quality, Productivity and Competitive Position). The essence of total quality management is in fact changing culture. Since changing culture is a notorious activity, several things should be observed.
To implement TQM, there are, at least, 18 obligations to be observed, including constancy of purpose, readiness to adopt a new philosophy and cessation of dependence on mass inspection.
John P. Kotter (Leading Change, 1986, p. 102) points out there are four barriers to empowerment in an organization: a formal structure that makes it difficult to act, bosses that discourage actions aimed at implementing the new vision, a lack of needed skills undermining action, and personnel and information system makes it difficult to act.
As indicated above, the empowerment ideas put forward by Nirwan could possibly be achieved if the following are taken into consideration:
* Establishing a sense of urgency is a must in the management of change. From top management to staff in the government (Ministry of Education and Culture) and from rectors to deans, heads of departments, lecturers and researchers to non-academic staff in universities. Complacency kills creativity, innovation and quality.
* Discipline should be upheld. Empowerment implies greater autonomy. In paternalistic cultures, autonomy and flexibility should be carefully observed before they are given. Otherwise, a class expected to become "creative" will turn out to be "chaotic". For example, cheating may become prevalent.
* Strong leadership is required. Change can only take place when there is a strong leader. In the case of tertiary students, a student led by a good facilitator should enhance creativity.
* Communications between the facilitator and students must be strengthened. If there is a problem, they should come together to talk and try to solve the problem. Students should be given a say what they have done, how they did it, what they liked and disliked.
In a collective culture, this might be more possible. Since power distance is significantly high in Indonesian culture, close supervision is thus inevitable. Since students are probably not used to being left alone, autonomy should be given step by step.
* Rewards are normally employed to influence one's performance and satisfaction. Rewards are extrinsic motivation. Rewards can be monetary or nonmonetary, ranging from a scholarship to a certificate of achievement.
These are only a few points among the myriad ways to empowering students, as well as academic and nonacademic staff. An educational environment is certainly different from a manufacturing company or a bank. In the process of developing courses, its stake-holders should be involved. Probably the most important customers are the students themselves.
Feedback from students should serve as a control mechanism whether empowerment is successful or not. By the same token, such an approach will prove to be more effective than just quality assurance based or a panel of experts appointed by the government to ensure that institutions have taken a sensible and responsible approach to determining and improving quality.
Whatever is done to improve the higher education system and practices, it should be noted that academic staff and nonacademic staff should be paid adequately. This is a most essential tool in boosting their motivation.
Perhaps a more focused study should be done on a specific course. Are all Indonesian tertiary institutions' courses so bad that they need a revolution?
The writer is an education consultant living in Jakarta.