Indonesia aims to become a developed country by 2045, or at the age of 100, supported by high-quality and competitive human resources.
To create quality and highly competitive human resources towards a Golden Indonesia, the government allocates an education budget of IDR 660.8 trillion or 20 percent of the 2024 APBN. The government through the Ministry of Education, Culture and Research , and Technology (Kemendikbudristek) also seeks to accelerate superior human resources for Golden Indonesia through vocational education and higher education.
However, all of this seems to be a false narrative in the midst of the current high tuition fees polemic. The increasing size of the education budget, this year increasing by around IDR 17 trillion compared to the previous year, is not felt by the public. In fact, society is faced with an increase in single tuition fees (UKT).
Also read: Behind the high cost of UKT, higher education is not yet a priority in the APBN
The increase in tuition fees starting in the 2024/2025 academic year for new students is further burdening the people and narrowing access to higher education. Yet, higher education is crucial for building high-quality and competitive human resources. Moreover, only 10.15 percent of Indonesia's population is highly educated (2022 Population Statistics Data). This poses a very minimal asset towards achieving Indonesia Emas (Golden Indonesia).
Extraordinary steps are needed to expand this capital. The quality and competitiveness ranking of Indonesia's human resources are still low (World Bank, 2018). The Gross Enrollment Ratio of Higher Education is also low, only 31.16 (BPS, 2023), indicating that the workforce that is ready to be productive, highly competent, and highly competitive is also low.
Therefore, placing higher education as a priority human resource development program is an urgent step. The higher education budget is only 0.6-1.6 percent of the total APBN (Kompas, 24/5/2024) shows that higher education has not yet become a priority program towards a Golden Indonesia.
Out of the total APBN 2024 of Rp 3.325 trillion, the budget for higher education managed by the Ministry of Education and Culture/Research and Technology is only Rp 56.1 trillion or around 1.6 percent of the APBN. This is still far from the ideal standard set by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) at 2 percent of the APBN.
In addition to the still low budget allocation, the use of the budget has also not been effective and does not yet correspond to the scale of priorities. The commitment of relevant stakeholders is needed to evaluate and improve the situation.
Also read: Single Tuition Fee: Conflict over Higher Education Funding
The relevant ministry/agency needs to sit down together to discuss this issue. It is no longer time to pass the responsibility back and forth as this issue should be a shared responsibility. We have been far behind for a long time, it is time to catch up in the next two decades.
The budget priority for higher education needs to be followed by other policies to improve public access to higher education. The biggest obstacle to accessing higher education is an economic issue, and the government has a responsibility to address it.
Leaving the issue of tuition fees to market mechanisms will backfire on the vision of a Golden Indonesia.