Court ruling won’t affect education budget

The Constitutional Court’s ruling that annulled the educational legal entities law, giving universities greater autonomy to develop their resources, will not affect the state budget allocation for education, an official said Friday.
“The Constitution has stipulated that the allocation for education should be at least 20 percent of the total state budget,” National Education Ministry spokesman Muhajir told The Jakarta Post.
The government for the first time in 2008 managed to increase the education budget to 20 percent of the 2009 state budget. It was Rp 224.44 trillion (US$24.45 billion).
The ministry’s higher education director general Fasli Jalal said the subsidy for higher education in 2009 was Rp 18 trillion, Rp 2 trillion higher than the previous year.
The subsidy was used, among others, to pay salaries and fund scholarships.
The court Wednesday ruled that the law was unconstitutional. The panel of judges criticized the law’s shortcomings in ensuring equal access to education for economically advantaged and disadvantaged people.
The 2009 law stipulated that the government paid for a minimum of one-third of operational funds in intermediate educational legal entities and half of the fund in higher educational legal entities.
Under the law, the educational legal entities can generate a maximum of one third of operational funds from the public in the form of tuition fees and donations.
This, among others, has been the source of nation-wide criticism against the short-lived law.
Students throughout the country have cried their protests of being burdened with higher fees. The law, they said, allowed for the commercialization of education.
Utomo Dananjaya, education observer among petitioners of the judicial review request of the law, said the government must return to its constitutional mandate to pay for the nation’s education.
The source of the education budget, he added, should come from tax.
He, however, warned that 20 percent of the state budget allocated for education should not include teachers’ salaries.
“Concerning Malaysia, it allocated 35 percent of their state budget for education and that does not include teachers’ salaries,” he said.
“They gained their independence 15 years after Indonesia but now they are 20 years more advanced.”
An analyst from Indonesia Corruption Watch, Ade Irawan, however, believes that the education budget will not cover free, quality education as mandated to the government by the constitution.
“Twenty percent is a minimal figure, of course it can burgeon to meet the needs of our education,” he said.
“The court ruling to repeal the law, he went on, charged the state “to have an abundance of money to fund education”.
“Should the court decide to keep the law, Indonesia will run with a private education system. This means people will need money if they want to enjoy education. The state will be less burdened.”
Ade added that the education budget would not be much use and would include teachers’ salaries.
He said that the aim to provide free education would not be the state’s duty.
On the other hand, the annulment of the law has confused several university rectors as they have been preparing programs to meet the requirements to be educational legal entities.
Rector for Semarang State University in Central Java, Sudijono Sastroatmodjo, said that he was preparing for the university to become a legal entity in 2011.
For now, he said he would wait for further instruction from the national education minister.