Unprincipled lecturers

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