Abuse of University Autonomy
There is no best way but to restore the essence of the university autonomy, to review various ministry and campus policies that are contrary to autonomy and to improve the governance of autonomous universities.
There are many Indonesians that are smart and achieve great things overseas, but why does this tend to happen when they study or work abroad? What is wrong with our universities?
It seems it is not difficult to answer that question. Generally, university governance in Indonesia is bad because it ignores the principles of checks and balances and democracy related to institutions, finance and human resources.
Campus elites are easily pushed into practical politics and make campuses a place to achieve power goals. If university governance is flawed, what are the implications for university scientists and the development of science?
Why autonomy?
The nation\'s founding fathers, such as Ki Hajar Dewantara, Mr Soenario Kolopaking, Mr Soepomo and even President Sukarno, conveyed the importance of university autonomy during the Indonesian Education Congress in Surakarta in 1947.
Universities should not be under a ministry because they will be entangled in bureaucratic formalism, destroying academic spirit and hindering their development.
Mr. Soepomo, the second rector of Universiteit Indonesia (1951-1954), gave a special mandate for Universiteit Indonesia (UI) to restore the Sriwijaya kingdom\'s golden age as a center of world knowledge, contributing to Indonesia and the world. A heavy mandate for the UI community.
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The idea of university autonomy in Indonesia was born long before the 1988 Magna Charta Universitatum (MCU). The MCU is now signed by nearly 900 universities in 88 countries. The first basic principle is that the university is a joint institution in society, managed differently based on its geography and history, generating knowledge and transmitting culture through research and teaching.
Second, teaching and research cannot be separated from the needs and development of society.
Third, academic freedom in research and teaching must be respected, the university rejects intolerance, is open to dialogue and is an ideal place for world scientists to meet.
Autonomy is a natural right of every university and is needed to be able to carry out its function of producing knowledge. Universities cannot be equated with any institution, political or business, and are free from the interests of power and money.
Didie SW
Each university must be allowed to develop differently, not uniformly, according to its geographical and historical context. The university can define itself to become a center of excellence in a particular field of science in order to become superior and a national and international reference.
In the future, universities in Maluku could develop marine science, or universities in Kalimantan and Papua could develop forestry sciences. So do universities elsewhere.
Government intervention in universities is not allowed. The government\'s position is only a steering one. It regulates, supports and demands the university’s accountability for the funds it has received in the form of university academic achievements.
Often, university autonomy is misunderstood as if they do not need funds from the government, having to find their own money. The government is still obliged to fund autonomous universities, as mandated in the constitution, the government must allocate 20 percent of the State Budget (APBN) for education.
However, academic autonomy will not produce spectacular academic achievements if the university\'s governance is bad, which means that autonomy is abused. It requires modern university governance, based on collegiality, and based on the principle of checks and balances.
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Regarding finances, universities must be responsible for the public money they manage. The government’s subsidy funds are generally far from sufficient to finance quality higher education. That’s why 11 state universities with legal entities rely on student tuition fees.
This means that the public has the right to ask whether the funds are managed for academic purposes, not used for other purposes. Likewise for faculties, the main stakeholders must be able to know the allocation of university funds and access them for the purpose of recruiting and paying their own lecturers (who are not state civil servants/ASN), research, community service, journal publishing and other academic activities.
In terms of human resources, all mechanisms of appointment, promotion and dismissal must refer to mutually agreed statutes and, of course, national laws. It is not permissible to fire university or faculty officials without going through procedures.
Every lecturer has the right to be promoted to the highest position (professor) if they excel, and may not kill a lecturer\'s career just for personal reasons from the campus elite.
Abuse of autonomy
In Indonesia, there are now 11 universities with autonomous status, which are referred to as state universities with legal entity (PTNBH). How was the experience of exercising autonomy? It seems that it is not easy for those PTNBH to live up to their ideals of autonomy. There are even indications of abuse of autonomy.
Among them, first, intervention from political interests from outside to the campus, especially during the election of the rector, and even the election of the dean. Apart from being expected by the campus elites themselves, politicians from outside like to use the campus to exert influence.
Transactional politics occurs on campus, commotion often arises because of it, and has the potential to divide the civitas (or university community). The problem is the same with universities directly under a particular ministry.
Often, the elected campus elites are not those with strong and competent leadership, but those who are supported by political interests.
Second, related to institutions, autonomous universities are usually represented by four organs, namely the Board of Trustees (MWA), the Executive, the Academic Senate (SA) and the Board of Professors (DGB).
The purpose of the existence of the four organs is to ensure checks and balances, starting from annual and long-term academic strategic planning, planning for financial and human resources management to implementation and evaluation monitoring.
Everything must be mutually agreed upon in a transparent, accountable, honest and accountable manner, especially manifested in the statute which is enacted as government regulations. However, in practice there can be deviations in the process of formulating the statute, namely when some articles on the statute are amended unilaterally in the interests of the executive power, and lead universities into academic tyranny, with all its implications.
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Third, collegiality relations has been absent for a long time, even though it is required in the modern university governance system.
It appears that the relationship between the campus elite and the lecturers is simply administrative in nature, namely superior-subordinate structural relations. Campuses duplicate government bureaucracies or political institutions.
Fourth, the implementation of autonomy, which should allow the campus to regulate itself according to its context, almost does not occur because it is shackled by various very detailed ministerial bureaucratic rules.
The assessment of the university\'s financial administration is likened to other government institutions, whereas the development of knowledge cannot be equated with the purchase of goods. That is why there are no universities in Indonesia that have strong basic research that can compete with universities abroad, because basic research requires unlimited funds and is free from complicated administrative procedures.
Fifth, universities and lecturers are uniformly accredited, required to follow an administrative system that does not empower them in accessing the research funds and laboratory management.
There is even a trend that the PTNBH statutes will be made uniformized. Even the lecturer\'s lecture syllabus, no matter how sophisticated and complete, is considered insufficient because a lecturer still needs to create a teaching book with a template that is very technical and cannot be understood. Lecturers even need to hire someone else to make it.
This is the explanation for why in many universities in eastern parts of Indonesia, such as Papua, the faculties have almost no professors due to the uniformity of arrangements throughout Indonesia.
Is there any significance of the university autonomy on the nation’s development?
Sixth, in general, the autonomous universities have not been able to establish mutually beneficial collaborations with the industry like in developed countries, where professors and doctoral students become research partners, and the results can be applied downstream into industrial products.
As a result, the university\'s finances depend on tuition alone. Likewise, the relationship between universities and government institutions is less than optimal so that many government policy products are not based on quality academic texts, and are not implemented.
Implication
Is there any significance of the university autonomy on the nation’s development? Our universities do not even match neighboring universities in Singapore or Malaysia. However, it is not the autonomy that is at fault, but the practice of deviation.
Sulistyowati Irianto
Another implication of abuse of autonomy is the potential to silence lecturers from having different opinions from those of the campus elites; turn off the critical thinking of the scientists to contribute and seek to make reforms in universities, society and the nation; it nourishes the mentality of lecturers to serve the campus and ministry bureaucracies, and creates apathy in universities. In such situation, academic culture and scientific progress will not grow.
There is no best way but to restore the essence of the university autonomy, to review various ministry and campus policies that are contrary to autonomy and to improve the governance of autonomous universities.
Sulistyowati Irianto, Professor of Legal Anthropology, School of Law, University of Indonesia
This article was translated by Kurniawan Siswoko.
