Students cheat their way into state universities

Students cheat their way into state universities

John Aglionby, Guardian News Service, Jakarta

Even though she does not get her entrance exam results for
another few weeks, Yenny says she is 99.99 per cent certain she
will be among the law faculty freshers at Jakarta State
University (UNJ) when the new academic year begins in September.

The 18-year-old's confidence is not based on a brilliant track
record at high school or luck that the subjects she revised came
up - almost everything comes up in some form as the exam is
merely dozens of multiple choice questions. It is much more
simple than that: she cheated.

The way Yenny (not her real name) got the answers, though, is
a million times more sophisticated than methods used by
generations of British pupils, namely writing information on
one's arms, legs and tissues, or going out to the toilet in the
middle of the exam and getting information.

Indonesian cheating syndicates are big business and use the
latest cell phone and pager technology, or simple text messages.

While having a drink at a roadside stall with a group of
schoolmates, a jockey (the term used for the masterminds behind
the cheating scams) approached them and said he could help them
to get through the highly competitive state university exam.

"I was doing OK at school but I wasn't feeling very confident
about the exam," says Yenny. "So I spoke to my parents about it
and they said they would pay the jockey."

Yenny's apprehension about failing the exam is well founded,
according to Juwono Sudarsono, the former minister of education
and professor at the University of Indonesia.

"It's all a question of demographics," he says. "The
competition to get into state universities nowadays is keener
than ever. There are about 30 million high school students and
only 2.5 million university places. And the odds are getting
bigger every year."

Exacerbating the situation is Indonesia's prolonged economic
crisis, which has dragged on since the collapse of most southeast
Asian currencies five years ago. Economic growth last year was
only 3.3 percent, a figure most European Union states would drool
at but sufficient to create jobs for only half Indonesia's school
leavers. Hence the pressure to get into university.

And with unemployment also rising -- the unemployed or under-
employed account for more than a third of the nation's workforce
-- fewer parents can afford to pay for their children to attend
the myriad private universities.

For example, the tuition fee per semester at UNJ is about Rp
400,000 (US$43) while at the private Atma Jaya University, also
in Jakarta, it is Rp 2.5 million.

It is not always the students that take the initiative to
contact the jockeys. Indonesian magazines have been describing
how it is now often parents who force their children to cheat in
their desperate desire to see them succeed.

"These days the only thing that talks is money," a mother from
Indonesia's third-largest city, Medan, was quoted as saying by
Tempo news weekly. "What else is there to do?"

In exchange for a Rp 2 million down payment and her secondary
school diploma as collateral, Yenny's jockey supplied her with a
tiny mobile phone and a hands-free cable and promised to call
during the exam.

"All I had to do was smuggle the phone into the exam room and
set the ringing tone to vibrate," she says. "I strapped the cord
to my left arm and wore a loose long-sleeved shirt so it wouldn't
be noticed."

Armed with a tongue-clicking code -- one for "OK", two for
"repeat" -- Yenny went into the exam earlier this month acting as
casually as she could. She left her bag and normal mobile phone
with the invigilators and settled down, waiting for the call. It
came after only five minutes. "All the jockey said was a series
of 10 numbers and letters: 1A, 2B, 3D, 4B, 5E and so on," She
says. Five minutes later he rang again with the next set of
answers.

"During one call an invigilator came up behind me but I just
coughed loudly and stopped the call," Yenny says. "I was very
nervous at the time but I have to say it worked to perfection."
Perfection included a number of deliberately wrong answers. "The
jockey explained that it would be suspicious if all his clients
got 100 percent. So he said each of us would get a different
selection wrong."

She has no idea how the jockey -- whom she described as being
in his mid-20s and probably an ex-student -- got the exam paper
in advance, and has no desire to find out. The most likely ways
are theft or bribery. Sometimes thieves sell the question paper
direct to the students but this is done rarely because the
jockeys then lose control over the supply of answers.

Yenny also says she does not know how many people paid for the
services of the same jockey, but guesses it is in the dozens.
"The authorities say they are cracking down and the invigilators
are strict but it's not that hard to get round them."

Not all the cheats are as fortunate as this daughter of a
"fairly successful businessman".

Earlier this month police in Medan busted a jockey syndicate
and arrested three jockeys, four exam paper thieves and 21
students trying to cheat their way into the region's main state
university, the University of North Sumatra. Many of the students
had mobile phones, or pagers, secreted on their bodies.

"It was our biggest success ever," says Lt. Tara Subroto, of
the Medan police. "However, we have no idea how many others there
were. It is probably like drugs: we are only scratching the
surface."

Handfuls of students were snared in virtually every other
major city across the sprawling archipelago of 210 million
people.

University authorities are not so pessimistic as the police.
Professor Sutjipto, the rector of UNJ, says five cheats were
uncovered at his institution during this year's exam.

"We had about 20,000 register for the exam and I would think
less than one percent were cheating," he says. "There will always
be jockeys but the rules are a lot stricter now than they used to
be, so it is a lot harder for them."

That means, however, about 200 people were cheating at his
university alone - which would account for about 15 percent of
the places on offer.

Measures UNJ and most other universities use to stop the
cheats are to insist on only pencils and erasers being allowed
into the exam room; all students have to bring an authorized
photograph of themselves (this is to prevent someone else sitting
the exam for them, a common practice until a few years ago
because handwriting was not an issue as the questions are all
multiple choice) and to have a student-to-invigilator ratio of
between 10 and 20 to one.

Professor Sutjipto discounts bribery as a means to pass the
state university entrance exam.

"That would be impossible because everything is computerized,"
he says. "The staff don't have access to the system to make any
changes."

The same cannot be said for the private sector, where most
institutions have their own entrance procedures.

"If I wanted to get round the system, bribery would definitely
be the way," says Sammy, a second-year maths student at Atma
Jaya. "It's much simpler and less risky than using a jockey. And
jockeys prefer to stick to the state system where the number of
candidates is greater and people are more desperate."

Sammy admits cheating on a regular basis in exams within the
university. "Virtually everyone does it," he says. "It's the only
way to get through because the tests and the curriculum are not
compatible - we just aren't taught everything we are tested on."

The government accepts that cheating in all aspects of the
education system is rampant, but little can be done while the
culture of corruption within the bureaucracy is so endemic.

"People are willing to pay a lot of money to get into
university and teachers' and lecturers' salaries are still very
low," explained a spokesman at the ministry of education. "It
will probably continue for at least another five years and
probably longer."

Meanwhile Yenny, who clearly feels no guilt, is preparing the
remaining Rp 10 million she owes the jockey, whose name she never
learnt. "Sure, it's a lot of money but it's cheaper than going to
a private university. I'll probably get a better education and
I'm more likely to get a decent job at the end. What could be
better?"