For example, the total score for UPH was 356, “positioning” it on top of some of Indonesia’s best, and most recognized, state institutions of higher learning like UGM (338), ITB (296), IPB (283), Unair (279), and ITS (258). Top private sector schools fared no better: Trisakti (263), Atma Jaya (243), Unpar (230), dan Petra (151).

As a person responsible for the accrediting of both state and private sector institutions of higher learning, I found several oddities in the “positioning” of the various schools in the Globe Asia ranking. The first was that while Globe Asia applied a variety of criteria similar to standard international indicators, they were “weighted” differently.

For example, campus facilities were weighted by 16 percent, but the weighting for the quality of teaching staff (lecturers) was only 9 percent. Even worse, quality of research was weighted 7 percent.

The second oddity was that the sub-criteria for campus facilities did not include bandwidth capacity as an accreditation standard. The third oddity was that the system used for comparison seemed to be based in no clear logic, for example apple to apple (same type comparison).  In this case, universities were compared to institutes, when the criteria should actually be different.

Domestically, regionally and internationally recognized accreditation standards, such as Menilik, Dikti, Asia University Network, THES, Jiao Tong and Webbo, generally apply criteria and key performance indicators that are “logical in terms of academic measurement”.

That means that, even though varied, the criteria truly result in “a guarantee of quality”, all the way from input, process and support facilities, through to outcome. These criteria and sub-criteria do more than just point out the superiority of “luxury lifestyle”.

The ranking done by Globe Asia is worrying in that it has the potential to trap the public in a bubble of  ”misinformation”. This misinformation then expands its influence when it is uncritically quoted, just as it is, in an evening newspaper. Perhaps this phenomenon is just another aspect of the commercialization of education in Indonesia. Education, particularly higher education, has become a ”lucrative” commodity for raising social status towards ”making it rich”. 

In the hands of the business wizards, education is managed like a matter of  lifestyle and image, not quality. They organizing rankings on the basis of  strenghths, but hide weaknesses that are actually important elements of  accrediation. Appaently, anything goes in the efforts to ensure that admission targets are satisfactorily met for a particular merketing period each year (February-July).

This can be detrimental to both state and private sector institutions of higher learning. This misinformation bubble generated by Globe Asia to raise the status of UPH automatically calls into question the status and quality of several institutions of higher learning, both state and private, that are managed in line with the highest quality standards. For example, a July 2007 analysis, which  utilized the internationally recognized Webbo accrediting system – considered the simplest in the world–  that applies the criteria of the orderliness of management data, ranked a number of well respected  institutions of higher learning in Asia, and placed Universitas Petra 49th in Southeast Asia, while UGM and ITB were ranked 12th and 13th respectively.

For that reason, as regulating entities, both the government and the public must actively monitor the tendency toward commercialization of education that results in unfair practices in the recruitment of students.

In fact, Indonesia’s National Accredidation Body (Badan Akreditasi Nasional: BAN) applies 15 standard evaluation criteria that provide clear indicators of the quality and competitiveness of institutions of higher learning. These include: adminsitrative and management leadership, laboratory facilities, thh largest number of teachers (not necessary for them to be foreign experts), teacher-student ratio, and even the ratio bewteen the number of students applying and those accepted.

The competitiveness of institutions of higher learning, as mandated in Dikti’s strategic concepts set out in the Higher Education Long Term Strategy (KELTS), must be achieved through a system of quality control, whose results are clearly measurable in terms of the criteria used; with academic standing being the core, most logical yardstick, rather than the application of the logic of business calculations.

PRIYO SUPROBO, Rector of ITS; Accreditation Team Member, Ditjen Dikti Depdiknas