The Commercialisation of Reason in the Vortex of Intellectual Hegemony
Every May, the ritual of commemorating National Education Day returns to remind us of the promise of independence through intellectual channels. However, behind the grand ceremonies and the clamour of the “Merdeka Belajar” slogan, there lurks a deep ontological unease: are our universities still the crucible of critical thought, or have they shifted to become mere factories supplying cogs for the global industrial machine?
Amid the buzz of digitalisation and market demands, our higher education seems to have lost its moral compass, trapped in disorientation between producing free individuals or manufacturing credentialed labourers obedient to the system.
This phenomenon of the commercialisation of reason is not merely a theoretical concern but has a tangible empirical basis. The latest data released by the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) at the beginning of 2026 reveals a worrying irony. The Open Unemployment Rate (TPT) for Diploma and Bachelor’s degree graduates shows a higher trend than for primary school graduates, standing at around 8.4 per cent.
This figure is a harsh slap to a system of education that has long idolised alignment between campus and the world of work. It turns out that efforts to “tame” the curriculum to suit industrial tastes do not automatically guarantee workforce absorption.
The issue runs deeper than mere unemployment statistics. We are witnessing what is termed the commodification of education, where knowledge is measured by its market exchange value rather than its utility for humanity.
Today’s campuses are trapped in an obsession with world rankings, often achieved through dry, bureaucratic administrative procedures. Lecturers are forced to become “paper labourers” chasing citation scores and international publications for accreditation, while dialectical interactions with students in the classroom are increasingly marginalised.
On another note, higher education is no longer an instrument of vertical mobility for the poor, but has become a luxury item whose price rises by an average of 10 to 15 per cent annually. This increase far outpaces real income growth in society, so students are now viewed as customers buying their future with debt or long-term instalments, rather than learners seeking truth.
Education in the Geopolitical Vortex
As a nation caught in the global geopolitical swirl, we must recognise that education has become a new battlefield for soft power. We can see stark contrasts in how different parts of the world treat their educational institutions.
On one side, China, through its strategic higher education projects, has successfully married technological innovation with tightly national interests. They produce scientists and technocrats to win the global supremacy competition, ensuring that every piece of research born from universities has a direct impact on their economic and military sovereignty.
At the other pole, Scandinavian countries like Finland steadfastly maintain education as a free public good. They prove that a nation’s economic progress does not have to be achieved by squeezing the sweat from students, but by strengthening social foundations and basic research.
Meanwhile, Indonesia currently stands at a hesitant crossroads, trying to imitate the competitive Western model of educational liberalisation, yet without adequate social guarantees and research funding. Data from UNESCO reinforces this, with our research funding allocation still not reaching 1 per cent of GDP.
This lag has long-term impacts on our intellectual diplomacy. When our campuses merely follow global curricula without critical capacity, we are actually perpetuating epistemic colonialism. As a result, the nation’s generation becomes mere consumers of other nations’ theories and technologies, without ever being able to produce knowledge rooted in our own sociological realities.
If universities continue to act as agents supplying workers to foreign corporations, then this nation’s sovereignty is at stake on the sterile lecture hall tables devoid of nationalistic ideas.
From Literacy to Liberation
This is where we need to return to our own well of wisdom to restore the dignity of education that is increasingly fading. The Father of National Education, Ki Hadjar Dewantara, once entrusted an eternal message that education is an effort to liberate humans both in body and soul.
Free humans are those who do not live under command, but can stand upright with their own strength and regulate themselves with order. This spirit is the antithesis of the commercialisation and dehumanisation of education we face today.
Ki Hadjar emphasised that the campus must be a “Garden” as well as an inclusive and enjoyable public space to nurture reason and intellect, not an administrative prison busy with accounting and tuition fees. Literacy, in this context, must not be limited to the ability to read and write texts. The literacy agenda must become a movement to liberate reason from the shackles of pragmatism.
We need graduates who are not only proficient in calculating algorithms or compiling financial reports, but also possess sensitivity to spell out the social injustices occurring around them.
It is time for our republic, which will soon be 81 years old, to undertake a radical reorientation. The government must be present not as an industrial overseer dictating the curriculum, but as a protector of the reason of truth in universities. We need campuses that dare to become centres of criticism against deviant power and centres