Unprincipled lecturers

I am a former lecturer in some higher learning institutes like Institute of Monetary Science, Brawijaya University, Indonesia University and Diponegoro University on the subject of tax law. As a lecturer I often guided my students in writing dissertations to fulfill the requirement for the final examination for the master degree. In guiding the students I gave a lot of ideas and materials to complete the dissertation. I also recommended the books for complementary reading, which were useful for comprehensive examination. I believed then that it was the job of the lecturer to provide such guidance to the students.

I did it not for financial gains. In fact at that time lecturing was by no means a lucrative business, and my salary was meager. I just wanted to do some service to the government in return to what the government had provided for me to facilitate my study until I graduated.

Recently I read in the media that in East Java more than 200 lecturers from various universities were found to have copied dissertations of their students. The dissertations are necessary for achievements evaluation of the lecturers to get to the higher rank. This practice is indeed shameful. However, the Ministry of Education and Culture should not make a hasty judgment and penalize such unpopular deeds of the lecturers. Instead, the authorities should investigate the matter deeply to find out why the lecturers should copy their students' works. There must be very good (although deplorable) reasons for doing it. For example, it might be that the workload of the lecturers were too burdensome so that they had very little time to prepare and write their own dissertations, which normally require researches and, not less important, fund. Maybe the requirement needed for promotion of the lecturers' position is too heavy. Moreover many of them still need moonlighting to make ends meet.

I myself have retired with a pension of IV/E category. But my younger brother, Sri Bintang Pamungkas, who is a permanent lecturer at Indonesia university, is still in III/d category. This is because he did not have time to write his dissertation. Yet he has no intention to copy his student's dissertation.

SUHARSONO HADIKUSUMO

Jakarta