The recent debate on a judicial review
filed with the Constitutional Court against Law No. 12/ 2012 on higher
education has spawned concerns among the country’s intellectuals over the
autonomy of higher education. The law has been contested by six students
from Andalas University who said that their access to university had been
impeded.
If the Constitutional Court annuls this law, it is feared that the
autonomy of higher education in Indonesia will be at stake.
The concern over the autonomy of higher education is reminiscent of the
previous revocation of Law on legal educational institutions (BHP), which
at that time similarly sparked heated debate among academics and
education pundits.
While the notion of autonomy in higher education has become a popular
catchphrase, it is has never been perceived with uniformity. There is no
such consensus, even among intellectuals, as to what constitutes autonomy
in higher education.
The notion of autonomy, unless implemented with precision, can be subject
to semantic manipulations that are at the whims of the power holders of
educational institutions. If related to an institutional and bureaucratic
context, it is clearly not a neutral word. It is a word loaded with
ulterior meanings.
Construed from the perspective of the technocratic logic of an
educational institution, autonomy signifies the idea of full control in
managing universities and in designing policies related to educational
activities.
Autonomy in this sense tries to
disconnect the management of an institution from state intervention.
Yet, autonomous educational institutions are not free from flaws. The
policies they impose may not benefit stakeholders (especially students)
and are not amendable to their interest and needs, as these policies are
the by-products of ideological and institutional logic to which
educational staff, students, and teachers must accede.
It is no surprise that clashes — which often end in violence — between
university rectors and students occurred in many, if not most,
universities.
Autonomy, however, can be understood from the perspective of a pure
academic logic, which emphasizes the spirit of lehrfreiheit (freedom to
teach) and lernfreiheit (freedom to learn) — the well-known slogan long
preserved by the University of Berlin. Educational institutions should be
autonomous under this perspective, in that academic freedom is nurtured
and the habits of mind such as inquisitiveness, persistence, creativity,
responsibility, and imagination are highly respected.
In contrast to the former notion of autonomy, which has the tendency of
favoring the rigidity of technocratic reasoning and ideology, the latter
notion allows fluidity and flexibility, and is not predetermined and
imposed upon those who are undertaking educational activities.
It seems that the imminent annulment of the higher education law may
considerably dilute the autonomy (in the former sense) of higher
education, as has been enthusiastically voiced by the country’s
intellectuals.
The concern here is plausible because without the law, autonomy with the
technocratic logic doesn’t hold sway and has no mutability in the
presence of conflict and disruption.
It is resistant to changes and by hook or crook tries to conserve
constancy for the sake of maintaining the vested interests and the
constellation of structural power of elites in educational institution.
But autonomy from the perspective of the academic logic is fluid, not
seeing things as always remaining constant in different circumstances.
With or without the law, it may not be distorted and can surely withstand
efforts which will disrupt it. Because it valorizes the habits of mind,
any disruption will be appropriated rather than summarily rejected.
Thus, given the vacuous notion of autonomy, the bogey of losing autonomy
of higher education should by no means cause us to succumb to unnecessary
and counterproductive politics of education and to lose sight of the
long-standing academic beacon of lehrfreiheit and lernfreiheit, which
have been instilled into those undertaking educational activities in most
universities in the US and European countries.
On the face of it, it would be much more productive if we intellectuals
were concerned instead over how the tradition of nurturing the habits of
mind among our students can be sustained rather than be overwhelmed by
the apprehension of the judicial review of higher education law. ●
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