Indonesia’s emerging economy has enabled its middle class to enjoy wider access for higher education services. In 2022, the country has 4,555 higher education institutions, with more than 75% of them are private universities (Kemdikbukristek 2022). These institutions are serving more than 9 million students at large. This number is expected to grow in the coming years, resulting from the increase of Indonesia’s middle class in 2030.
On one hand, this trend reflects the future potential of Indonesia’s innovation. Many argue that the university plays a pivotal role in boosting up the state competitiveness. Taylor (2016) for example, highlighted how higher education has succeeded in empowering the innovation of developed countries through research and development. This may also explains why developing countries and the wider third world also pave their way for innovation through supporting universities.
However, on the other hand, this trend should also be treated with caution. While universities are perceived as key players in enhancing the country’s development, they are also hardly able to survive from the grim fate of academic capitalism. Some universities have been reshaped as corporations style actors, producing services with degree provisions as their main commodities. In some developed countries, like Australia and the United Kingdom, for instance, higher education contributes significant roles in trade balance, boosting up trade in services.
What is academic capitalism? How hard has academic capitalism reshaped the higher education institutions – and what went wrong? How has developing country, like Indonesia, been impacted by this trend?
Contending academic capitalism
As the economic milestone of globalization unfolds, the disruption of commercialization and marketization have prompted mass social changes (Rennen and Martens 2003). These include changes of paradigm in understanding the role of universities. In the past, during post-industrial and information society, the universities were perceived as main actors who nurtured community of knowledge (Arimoto 2011). Exchange of knowledge was much driven by the novelty and the passion of developing sciences.
As the world has shifted into post-capitalist society since the 1960s, the role of universites has been dragged into the trap of marketization. The universities have turned into enterprise of knowledge by deliberately nurturing strong connection between research and commercialization. The way to measure the quality of academic staff has also been changed from teaching or research focused performance, shifted to a more universal and commercial criteria of academic professionalism.
More interestingly, this structural transformation has also changed the approach of academic reward system, moving from attribution to achievement (Arimoto 2011). In a more broadly level, this academic capitalism has also raised the leverage of the university rankings from the national level in the US to the world level rankings.
The political economy of world university rankings
Amid the significant structural changes driven by academic capitalism, the debate of world university rankings has been one of the most contentious issues. Some argue that these instruments are on the right track, aspired by the ambitious quality assurance and the rationales of public accountability (Hazelkorn 2016).
However, given the disparities of the world higher education institutions, others argue that these rankings are deemed to generate greater disbenefits than actual benefits. Regardless of the variety of methodologies and criteria, these world university rankings in practice are often seen as one size fits all instrument, and more likely to be “Harvardometers” (Goglio 2016). They measure how much the institution complies to the Anglo-Saxon-style elite research college model, where Harvard University in the US is perceived as the main model (Stack 2021).
From the political economy perspective, the world university rankings have been an unequivocal demonstration of the repulsive effects of neoliberalism, with particular emphasis on the marketization of higher education (Rosser 2022). Where most of prominent rankers are commercial, study has revelead that universities may improved their position in the rankings should they subscribe the rankers’ products such as consulting, analytics, and the wider services, despite their institutional quality (O’Malley 2021). This situation highlights the fact that the academic capitalism has appeared to be firmly rooted in the current situation of higher education process.
What happens in Indonesia
As the universities are deemed to be enterprise of knowledge, the influence of academic capitalism is now at its best. In the post-capitalist society, the Indonesian 4,555 higher education institutions were engulfed by the neoliberalism agenda. It is crystal clear that the Indonesian government shares ambitious target in raising the positions of Indonesian top universities in the world rankings. Grant provisions were even intensively promoted to boost up the ranking’s position. Clusterisation of universities was once also introduced by the government to identify the institutional capacities (Wahid, Fathana, and Raharjo 2020).
This government’s approach in understanding ranking is, unfortunately, seen as a role model by many higher education institutions in Indonesia. More recently, many Indonesian universities are involved in the ranking’s warfare. Some believe that rankings performance has correlation with the animo of new students’ intake. Some others are even trapped in the racing-to-the-bottom, where the ranking performance is merely used as marketing instruments. As results, non-academic rankings such as Webometrics and UniRank are popular in Indonesia, regardless of some questions on their methodology.
What happens in Indonesia reflects a serious impact of academic capitalism. There should be deliberate actions to educate the society and the wider nations to restore the role of universities as community of learning and knowledge. In such, higher education should be also returned to be an agent for social advocacy, where the commercialization of knowledge should be placed after the public interests. Under such conditions, the current fallacy on world university rankings shall not prevail.
—
References
Arimoto, A. 2011. “Reaction to Academic Ranking: Knowledge Production, Faculty Productivity from an International Perspective.” In University Rankings, The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective, ed. Jung Cheol Shin. Springer Science & Business Media.
Goglio, Valentina. 2016. “One Size Fits All? A Different Perspective on University Rankings.” Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 38(2): 212–26.
Hazelkorn, Ellen. 2016. Global Rankings and the Geopolitics of Higher Education: Understanding the Influence and Impact of Rankings on Higher Education, Policy and Society. Taylor & Francis.
Kemdikbukristek. 2022. “SRV4 PDDIKTI : Pangkalan Data Pendidikan Tinggi.” Kementerian Pendidikan, Kebudayaan, Riset, dan Teknologi RI. https://forlap.kemdikbud.go.id/ (June 30, 2022).
O’Malley, Brendan. 2021. “Berkeley Study: Major University Rankings May Be Biased | Center for Studies in Higher Education.” https://cshe.berkeley.edu/news/berkeley-study-major-university-rankings-may-be-biased (June 30, 2022).
Rennen, Ward, and Pim Martens. 2003. “The Globalisation Timeline.” Integrated Assessment 4(3): 137–44.
Rosser, Andrew. 2022. “Higher Education in Indonesia: The Political Economy of Institution-Level Governance.” Journal of Contemporary Asia 0(0): 1–26.
Stack, Michelle. 2021. Global University Rankings and the Politics of Knowledge. University of Toronto Press.
Taylor, Mark Zachary. 2016. The Politics of Innovation: Why Some Countries Are Better Than Others at Science and Technology. Oxford University Press.
Wahid, Fathul, Hangga Fathana, and Wiryono Raharjo. 2020. Assessing Research Performance: Introduction to This Monograph. Bratislava: Printinghouse GUPRESS.