The Collapse of Our Educational Integrity
The news of the sting operation carried out by the Corruption Eradication Commission against the Rector of Jenderal Soedirman University, Akhmad Sodiq, on Friday, followed by his naming as a suspect a day later, has become a catalyst for the credibility crisis in our higher education world. A person who should be a moral pillar and intellectual symbol has instead been dragged into the current of commercialised transactions in new student admissions. A campus bearing the great name of a national hero has become a stage of moral irony.
A month ago, my daughter told me about a friend who could not continue her studies because her mother was seriously ill and her father had long passed away. There were also stories about many parents who were afraid to send their children to state universities because they feared the single tuition fee costs. This contradiction feels like a slap in the face. On one hand, the campus gates seem tightly shut for those who lack money despite having sharp minds. On the other hand, those gates are opened wide through the back door for those who can pay the commercialised price of education to enter state universities. The greed of university officials has shifted education from a fundamental right into a dirty economic commodity.
Viewed through the lens of public communication theory, corruption in educational institutions represents a failure of ethos regarding the credibility and moral character of the communicator. From an organisational communication perspective, educational institutions should not merely be factories producing diplomas, but rather spaces for forming value systems. When the highest leader of a campus commits corruption, the message radiated to society is a massive devaluation of values. This shows that money and position are everything, while honesty is merely a complementary jargon behind the academic podium. How pitiful.
At this stage, we also witness how today’s higher education system has fallen into a formalism trap, where education is only busy chasing accreditation, publication quantity, and administrative target fulfilment, yet neglects to instil spiritual and moral integrity. Education that is detached from the values of honesty has lost its primary essence as a light for civilisation and has transformed into a mere tool of power legitimation.
The phenomenon of commercialisation and corruption in higher education today seems relevant to the critique of education philosopher Paulo Freire. Freire sharply criticised what he called the banking concept of education. In this model, students are considered merely passive empty vessels to be filled with dogma and technical skills to serve market needs. When higher education institutions fall into the logic of banking education, students are no longer educated to become critical human beings who are sensitive to social inequality. The campus is dehumanised into a transaction machine where students pay, the campus transfers degrees, and campus elites reap profits.
Even more ironic is that students who are supposedly agents of change from the middle class are instead trapped in transactional pragmatism. Examples are often heard in coffee shop conversations about logistical mobilisation to place a certain cadre in a student organisation leadership position for short-term practical political purposes. In such an ecosystem alienated from humanity, the integrity of education seems to have died. Education has lost its function as a tool of liberation as championed by Freire. The phenomenon occurring in Indonesia’s education world today seems to have transformed into a new instrument of oppression by marginalising the poor and pampering the rich.
The anomaly in Indonesian education should look to the experiences of developed countries such as those in Europe. Scandinavian countries like Finland and Denmark consistently dominate the top ranks of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index and the Legatum Prosperity Index. There, academic integrity is not merely a clause on paper. Violations of honesty such as cheating or plagiarism carry social and academic consequences that can be fatal to one’s career. Education is developed to train personal responsibility and social empathy, not merely competition over numbers on paper. The result is clear: a transparent and clean system produces efficient public governance, innovation without patronage barriers, and a prosperous society.
We are certainly very ashamed when hearing about the alleged research falsification and fabrication by a number of Indonesian citizens at the international scientific forum ISPPD 2026 in Copenhagen, Denmark, last May. Now, with the arrest of the Unsoed Rector, this should be a turning point for total evaluation. The world of higher education, especially state universities, in this country is not doing well at all. We still remember how a minister who graduated from a private campus outside Java almost proudly obtained a doctoral degree from one of the best state universities in Indonesia. Fortunately, the rejection from professors and the public strengthened, and ultimately the minister did not immediately receive the doctoral title.
At this point, we should reflect on a fundamental question: Who is actually to blame for Indonesia’s education being dragged to this terrible point? Is it the fault of the campus leadership recruitment system that is full of political interests? Or is it us as a society who have allowed a money-driven culture to destroy the institution of knowledge?