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Big Ambitions, Mediocre Results: Politics, Power and the Quest for World-Class Universities in Indonesia

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Transformations in Higher Education Governance in Asia

Abstract

For more than a decade, the Indonesian government has sought to transform the country’s higher education institutions (HEIs), particularly its leading ones, into ‘world-class universities’. In 2006, the Education Ministry (hereafter MoEC) established a special task force to elevate ten local HEIs to world-class status (Haryanti 2010). A year later, the Education Minister, Bambang Sudibyo, announced that it had expanded the list to 50 HEIs, including 27 state and 23 private universities (Antara 2007). Recent Education Ministry five-year plans have accordingly set targets for the number of Indonesian HEIs to be ranked among the world’s top universities in global university league tables such as the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, Shanghai Jiao Tong’s Academic Ranking of World Universities, and the QS World University Rankings. MoEC’s strategic plan for 2005–2009, for instance, aimed to have four Indonesian HEIs in either the world’s top 500 universities or Asia’s top 100 (Department of National Education 2005: 52). Its strategic plan for 2010–2014 aimed to increase this to 11 HEIs in the world’s top 500 (Ministry of Education and Culture 2010: 43).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The name of the Education Ministry has changed a number of times in recent years. Sometimes, it has had carriage of the culture portfolio, sometimes not. For a period it was a Department rather than a Ministry. For the sake of simplicity, I use the acronym MoEC (short for Ministry of Education and Culture) to refer to all its incarnations rather than chop and change between its official titles. Likewise, I refer to the relevant minister as the Minister of Education/Education Minister regardless of his precise title.

  2. 2.

    Data is from the Directorate-General for Higher Education (DIKTI).

  3. 3.

    Government Regulation 66/2010 on an Amendment to Government Regulation 17/2010 on Education Management and Implementation.

  4. 4.

    At the time of writing (August 2016), Gumilar had not been formally accused of or put on trial for corruption, although he had appeared as a witness in the corruption trial of a former Vice-Rector.

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  1. University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

    Andrew Rosser

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  1. The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Darryl S. L. Jarvis

  2. Lingnan University, Hong Kong, China

    Ka Ho Mok

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Rosser, A. (2019). Big Ambitions, Mediocre Results: Politics, Power and the Quest for World-Class Universities in Indonesia. In: Jarvis, D., Mok, K. (eds) Transformations in Higher Education Governance in Asia. Higher Education in Asia: Quality, Excellence and Governance. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9294-8_4

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