PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP ON TERTIARY EDUCATION VOICE FROM PRIVATE INSTITUTION (UNIVERSITAS MUHAMMAIDYAH SURAKARTA)

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1 PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP ON TERTIARY EDUCATION VOICE FROM PRIVATE INSTITUTION (UNIVERSITAS MUHAMMAIDYAH SURAKARTA) Prof. Bambang Setiaji Rector of Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta Jl. A. Yani, Pabelan, Tromol Pos 1 Surakarta, 57102, rector@ums.ac.id I. Introduction Every government all over the world is aware that they have to develop their country for a better future. Qualified human resources are the important part in developing the country. Since the qualified person may only be created by educating them, the education institutions are therefore taking a significant responsibility in country development. Indonesia is one of developing countries where a number of education institutions already established. It is expected that with a number of education institutions, the country development will run well. Tertiary education has strategic roles in developing Indonesia. There are some reasons behind the statement. Firstly, higher education has to create competent and skilled human resources for the development. Secondly, it has to produce, improve and apply science and technology. Thirdly, it has to serve the community in adopting science and technology, and to educate people in using technology wisely. Indonesian government has realized the roles and interpreted them into three Higher Education Mandates [1]. Armida, the Minister of Public Servant Empowerment once said that the Higher Education is expected to have roles in producing credible human resources, in creating innovation and excellent ideas for (Indonesian) development, and in keeping the process of development clear from group interest (except the interest of the people) [2]. Having a large number of tertiary education graduates is considered important to strengthen the basis of national competitiveness. Foreign companies take this number into account to consider putting investments in a country. Indonesia, however, has a relatively low number of students studying in higher education. Prof. Djoko Santoso, the Director of Higher Education, has recently stated that the rough number of Higher Education Participation Rates (HEPR) is only 18.7% [3]. HEPR is the ratio of the number of students enrolling into higher education with respect to the number of people with the corresponding learning age. Prof. Djoko was quoted to say that the number of higher education students is 4.6 million, while the number of people who are supposed to study in higher education is 25 million. As a comparison, developed nations have much higher HEPR. Japan, UK, and Canada, for instance, have HEPRs between 40 50%. Even more, the HEPR of the US is 60% and of South Korea is 90%. 1

2 Considering the importance of larger number of higher education graduates, Prof. Djoko declared that Indonesia has to increase HEPR, but warned that it must be done without disregarding the quality. It means that the number of people studying in higher education may not only be considered in quantitative term but the related quality should also be taken into account. In this stage the higher educations should start thinking to enhance the quality of teaching and learning process in addition to have sufficient capacity for educating the people. Early this year, he called public universities to raise the student enrolment number. Despite this call, the capacity of public universities to conduct learning activities is quite low [4]. Three new public universities were again established this year: Universitas Borneo, Universitas Musamus Merauke, and Universitas Bangka Belitung, enabling the capacity increase of accepting new students. Yet, this additional capacity (beside the existing capacity) is still not enough for all people willing to continue study at higher educations in Indonesia. While the government has efforted to cover as much people as possible to enroll in tertiary educations, the number of higher educations owned by the government may not be enough. The tertiary education providers owned and operated by the community are therefore necessary to include more people enrolling in tertiary educations. Hence, private tertiatry educations may be considered as government partners in providing higher education for the people. Besides controlling and regulating them, the government is also suggested to assist and support them in order to enhance the private institutions enable providing qualified higher education for the people. To make this happen, the role of third party like Non Government Organizations or other bodies is necessary to mediate public institutions and the government to work together in partnership approach for the purpose of providing the people higher education. II. The Existing Condition Indonesian Constitution 1945 (UUD 45) gives order to the government to smarten the country ( mencerdaskan kehidupan bangsa ) meaning that the government is required to make the people knowledgeable. Considering the limited number of people accepted in government owned universities, the responsibility cannot be fully taken by the government. There should be some other higher education providers to accept the rest to have higher education. The higher educations owned and operated by non government institutions or private institutions are expected to help the government fulfilling the order. They are currently taking a considerable part in carrying out tertiary education activities in Indonesia. 2

3 The significant role of private tertiary educations may be simply indicated by their number of 2928 (97.24%) comparing to the number of public tertiary educations of 83 (2.76%). In term of enrolled student number, private tertiary educations may have capacity for (58.39%) student, while the government tertiary educations have the capacity for (41.61%) students. The annual number of student graduated from the private one is also higher, (52.54%), compared with that from the public one, (47.46%) [4]. Data from National Statistics Survey conducted by the Indonesian Central Statistics Bureau (BPS) in 2008 indicates that HEPR is not evenly distributed among provinces [6]. For instance, HEPR of Yogyakarta province is as high as 50% but HEPR of Lampung, Riau Islands, Bangka and West Papua is less than 10%. These figures point to the reality that the government needs to establish and operate a number of higher educations in some provinces. However, establishing higher institutions and operating them particularly in wide ranging region may not be easy due to the control and managerial problems. As part of solutions for the problems, private institutions have established a number of higher educations in far reaching provinces. It again highlights that the private institutions have offered significant contributions to get the jobs done. Private institutions have established 1475 tertiary educations in Java and 1453 outside the region. These will extensively provide higher education for the people of Indonesia. The number of all private tertiary educations in the east regions of Indonesia including Maluku, North Maluku, West Nusa Tenggara, North Nusa Tenggara, Papua, and West Papua is 174, which is 5.94% of the total number of private tertiary educations in Indonesia. Based on the data, a political will from the government is necessary to encourage developing tertiary educations outside Java, particularly, in the east part of Indonesia. This policy is aimed to accelerate developing the regions. However, private tertiary education institutions suffer from several problems in terms of financial, quality, and fairness in treatment. These problems have a big impact on the level of competitiveness of their graduates and the level of research and innovation they can contribute. In this circumstance, the government is expected to assist them to reach the fair level of research and innovation by dealing with them properly. III. The development requirement of tertiary education A university is essentially such organization that manages education as its core business. The main output of university is graduated students. In order to produce qualified output, which is indicated by their competence level acknowlegded by relevant users, the university must be a healthy organization 3

4 in terms of resources, management, conduction of education (teaching learning, research, and community service), and funding. The good resources may be identified from the availability of competent lecturers and staff, complete facilities, as well as good prospective students. The competence of lecturers and staff can be achieved through human resource development programs such as study pursuing, collaborative research with industries or other external stakeholders, sending staff to participate short courses or trainings. In ideal perspective, a lecturer in tertiary education to hold at least a Master Degree since they will be teaching Bachelor students, a grade one step lower than the Master Degree; and for those who also carry out research as the principal researcher, they must be doctors. For ensuring a successful human resource development, the recruitment of lecturer/faculty member and staff should comply with the standard procedures and fulfill a number of decided qualifications. It is the fact that the quality of graduated students is also affected by the quality of student input. In order to have good students, similar with recruitment of lecturer and staff, the selection of students must be based on a number of qualifications. In addition to human resources, other resources such as facilities including classrooms, laboratories, library, and non academic facilities (hotspot area, bookstore, park, etc.) are required to support the process of teaching learning. From the management point of view, as an organization, a university must have appropriate organization structures with clear jobs and responsibilities, vision and mission, short medium long term objectives/targets with clear indicators and steps to achieve them. To be innovative and competitive, among the objectives must be the things representing the excellence of output different from other similar competitors (universities). Achievement of the objectives is evaluated periodically; once the objectives are achieved, higher targets are set to be accomplished in the next period. In this manner, the quality will continuously improve. It is unavoidable that successful conduction of education in tertiary education requires financial supports. For private tertiary education, the main financial source is from students tuition fees. Therefore, the private tertiary educations should diversify the financial source to secure their business due to the change of student number. IV. The Institution problems In addition to their role in country development, the private tertiary educations are now encountering some problems. The followings are the problems of the private tertiary educations that may be classified as internal and external problems. 4

5 a. Internal problems The internal problems of private tertiary education may be classified as the problems of human resources, student quality, financial, and management. The detail of the problems may be depicted in the following. One of the problems faced by private tertiary education is insufficient number of lecturer to meet the government requirement determined in the ratio of lecturer students. This requirement will always be verified at study program accreditation by National Accreditation Body (Badan Akreditasi Nasional, BAN). The ratio will also be checked at academic data reporting in Study Program Evaluation Based on Self assessment (Evaluasi Program Studi Berbasis Evaluasi Diri, EPSBED). Unless the minimum ratio is fulfilled, the operational permit of study program is granted. For the private institution institutions, fulfilling the minimum ratio may not be easy. The financial capability of the institution for employing lecturers in enough number is the reason. On the other hand, the required ratio set by the government may be considered too restrictive. Besides insufficient in number, the qualification of the lecturer is also problematic. Compared with lecturers at public tertiary educations holding Master and Doctoral degrees of 74.69%, the lecturer at the private tertiary educations having the same qualification is only 5.19%. It means that the majority of lecturers at the tertiary private education hold Bachelor Degree (94.81%). Furthermore, their distribution among higher educations is inequal. In Borneo, Kalimantan, and Sulawesi, the lecturers at private tertiary education having bachelor degree are 99.42% while in east regions almost 100% lecturers are holding Bachelor Degree. A better situation may be found in Java where 8.15% of the lecturers have Master and Doctoral Degree, while the rest (91.85%) are still holding Bachelor Degree [5]. This condition indicates the wide gap between public and private institution in term of lecturer qualification that will certainly lead to the quality of teaching learning process. Since the prospective students will choose the higher education with good lecturers, the private tertiary education will normally be a second option after the students are not accepted in government universities. As a result, student at private universities will also be of lower academic level compared with those at government universities. Lower qualification of lecturer with lower student intellectuality will be a complete reason for graduating unqualified alumni. Private tertiary educations generally rely their funding on students tuition fee. Therefore, they have to keep the number of student high to be sustainable. It is somehow carried out by lowering the selectivity in accepting the prospective students. On the other hand, there is an annual competition among private universities to get students as much as possible. The institutions with small student body 5

6 will certainly be facing difficulty to develop or even keep them alive. Even for an institution with big student body the tuition fee still needs to increase for developing the university. However, it may decrease the number of upcoming prospective student due to financial reason. Managerial problem is another obstacle of private institution. Since it is self managed by the institution management and nobody else may control them, they will decide what they want to do. This may lead to the circumstance where conflict of interest takes place. The management may use the funding and other resources improperly. Anybody in the institution disagreeing their policy will face a punishment. When the time for appointing new leader comes, a number of people will make a great effort to get the position of leader. It is often, that the competition is unfair and the conflict continues for a while. Even for some reputable private universities, this may lead the university fail to sustain their business. b. External Problems The private tertiary educations are vulnerable from external factors. One of them is the policy of government. When the government pays a good attention to the quality of teachers and decides to increase their salary as well as gives some extra money once they get certified, the number of prospective student applying for the faculty of teaching increased significantly. Once the government changes the policy, the situation will also change. It may be concluded that, instead of supervising and controlling the government, the tertiary educations are even influenced by the government policy. Another external factor affecting private institution is the change of regulations. The change will make the institution busy to comply with the regulations instead of developing itself. The regulations need to be updated, but not to keep changing. Furthermore, for updating the regulations, private institution needs to be involved for more comprehensive perspective and complete considerations. So far, the regulations are constructed by involving big reputable universities and leaving the private universities behind and, as a result, the regulations are set as high as they able to achieve disregarding the capability of small private universities to achieve them. As previously mentioned, the number of private tertiary education is high. However, they need to be well coordinated by the government. The government has established a body called coordination of private higher education (KOPERTIS) that runs a coordination tasks among private higher educations. In addition to the jobs that they are currently doing, they need to do more such as developing the higher educations and getting involved to resolve their problems. V. Proposed solutions 6

7 According to the abovementioned problems, the following is the solutions proposed for the problems: 1. To increase the qualification of lecturers working for private tertiary educations, the scheme of scholarship from the government for the lecturers studying overseas should keep going with the increase number of grant recipient. 2. For enhancement of institution quality, a number of schemes such as research grant and institution grant to be extended, particularly for private institutions. The grants will be beneficial to develop private institutions to be gradually equal with public institutions in term of quality. 3. It is necessary to review the requirement of minimum number of lecturer since, for private tertiary education, it is too restrictive and financially hard to comply with. The government may set up an adaptive regulation, such that the institutions may not be pushed in complying with the requirements and unable to continue their role in educating people. 4. It may be considered to allow the private institutions employing the retired qualified lecturers from government universities as well as good industrial practitioners with the recognition from the government as formal lecturers. 5. The division of lecturers into the different home base for bachelor, master and doctoral degrees to be again reviewed as the same lecturer may not be considered as a lecturer in different degree levels, even they are actually teaching in different degree levels. This does not only take place in private tertiary educations but also happens in public higher educations. 6. The government has actually allocated a number of lecturers who are government employees to teach in private institutions, however, they are somehow of lower academic capability than the institution employed staffs. It may be considered to provide the assistance in the form of financial that may be used by the institution for employing mare qualified staffs. The institution has to be responsible in using the financial support properly. 7. The students studying at private tertiary educations are supposed to have an equal right for applying scholarship, since some scholarships may only apply for students at public tertiary educations, e.g. scholarship for the intelligent poor students (Bidikmisi) provided by the government. Some private tertiary educations may already allocate a number of scholarships for the poor students. However, some other students who are really in need can not be granted due to the available funding is limited. 8. The networks among private tertiary educations and between private and public tertiary educations have to be established for achieving the common benefits such as the use of common facilities e.g. 7

8 Laboratory and Library that will enhance the quality of teaching learning process. The government should take the responsibility for this work. 9. Public tertiary educations to provide assistances for private tertiary educations for enhancing their quality. The government may assign the public universities to do so, according to some kind of similarities as well as based on the region. 10. The private tertiary educations may not be fully considered as business institutions since they also perform a social works in educating people. The private tertiary educations established by a social organization like Muhammadiyah take even more social role rather than business activity. Since the institutions have carried out social tasks, it would be wise if the government is willing to take the tax from a private education provider calculated not as a business body but as a social institution. 11. Due to the limited available funding, private tertiary educations are unable offering innovative and creative programs, which normally necessitate big funding. The supports from the government as well as public universities are therefore necessary for private institutions to enable offering the programs. 12. It seems that the government prefers to enhance the prestigious universities to reach the level of World Class University. While the intention is good, thousands of people particularly in remote regions are still in need of enjoying higher education. This fact may not be disregarded and the institutions providing them higher educations are mostly private tertiary educations. The funding for enhancing universities should be properly allocated to support developed universities becoming World Class University as well as for supporting private tertiary educations to teach people in remote regions. 13. The budgeting capability of private tertiary educations is much less than that of public university. On the other hand, if the government has extra funding the preference is to establish some other public tertiary educations instead of using the budged for enhancing the existing private education providers. It would be wise, if the government is willing to enhance the existing private institutions rather than establishing new education institutions. Please be noted, the budget for establishing a university may be used to enhance a number of universities. 14. In case the government would like to establish some new public tertiary educations, the locations of them are in regions where HEPR is low. 15. The role of external body concerning on higher education is necessary to establish the communications among education institutions to be together doing the tasks for educating people and presenting better future for the country. 8

9 VI. Conclusion It is the fact that the significant contribution for providing higher education for the people of Indonesia has been presented by private tertiary educations. However, in doing their tasks, the institutions encounter a number of problems that may not be solved by themselves. The problems may come from internal and external factors. They will therefore need the help from the government as well as from other external bodies to get the problems solved. The assistances may not merely in the form of financial but also in the other forms, such as policy and adaptable regulations. The collaborations among private institutions and between private and public institutions need to be established to enable sharing of facilities. In this scheme, the benefits of collaborations will enable the institutions developing together toward the better quality. To make this happen, the role of government as well as other bodies concerning on higher educations are necessary. If the growth can be maintained, the objective of being World Class University may be achieved not only by government tertiary educations but may also be gradually achieved by private tertiary educations. Acknowledgement The Author would like to gratefully acknowledge the contributors: Dr. Agus Ulinuha; Drs. M Musiyam, MT; Dr. Husni Thamrin; Dr. M. Mujiburohman; and Dr. M. Da I, from Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta who have given valuable substances for the paper. Reference: [1] Undang undang Pendidikan Nasional [2] Rifa Nadia Nurfuadah, Sebanyak 33 PTN Nilai Kinerja Pemerintah, [3] M.Latief, Dikti: APK Indonesia Hanya 18,7 Persen!, [edukasi.kompas.com] [4] Djibril Muhammad, Ujian Mandiri PTN Pangkas Jatah Mahasiswa PTS, [ [5] BPS, 2009/2010, Statistik Pendidikan [6] BPS, Angka Partispasi Sekolah ( A P S ) Menurut Provinsi Tahun