Strengthening Institutional Management in non-autonomous public Higher Education Institutions
INDONESIA – Managing Higher Education for Relevance and
Efficiency (IMHERE) Project
BOOK I : Self Evaluation Report
Name of institution: HASANUDDIN UNIVERSITY
Directorate General of Higher Education
Ministry of National Education
June 15, 2006
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
Since 2004 HasanuddinUniversity (Unhas) has prepared a set of documents to support its transformation into BHP status. This early preparation is mostly triggered by the fact that the Directorate General of Higher Education (DGHE) has intensively prepared a BHP Law as a consequence of the National Education System Law No: 20 Year 2003. Among others, BHP status is considered as the most appropriate vehicle to bring a new mind set to all Unhas community, a mind set which is consistently eager to produce high quality work.
The Unhas BHP documents consist of three main documents namely Self Evaluation Report, Strategic Plan, and Transitional Plan. The substantive point of these documents is to justify that after transforming into a legal entity (BHP), Unhas will be able to sustain and even to improve its existing quality. Analysis performed indicated that the sustainability of Unhas-BHP will be determined by at least four interrelated aspects; First, Unhas attractiveness as (i) a conducive place to study for new incoming students and new participants for training/life-long learning, (ii) a good place for academic and administrative staff to do activities, (iii) a reliable and quality partner for industry, government, and community in general; Second, capacity own by Unhas-BHP that is required to support implementation of its mission. This category includes availability and quality of human resources, supporting facilities, and operational costs; Third,the ability of Unhas-BHP in sustaining and improving quality and quantity of its learning capacity; and Forth, quality of its organization and management. This forth aspect is principally important because it will directly affect the other three aspects.
The above mentioned documents had been submitted to the Board of Higher Education (BHE) of the DGHE in July 2005. Based on the BHE responds, these documents were then revised (first revision) and resubmitted in March 2006. An intensive discussion between the BHE and Unhas-BHP taskforce was conducted last April 2006 which was intended to clarify the substance the revised documents. The second revision as required after the clarification process is just underway. Although this process is relatively slow and at the same time the BHP Law has not been approved, Unhas is very much convinced that the programs set up in the documents could lift up Unhas quality to a significant level. For this reason, Unhas top management has been committed to use these documents as the backbone of its strategic and operational plans.
The presence of IMHERE project is just a good opportunity for Unhas to gain support in preparing its autonomous legal status. This project is just in line with the intention of Unhas, specifically in setting up a quality management as the main basis to sustain and even to improve Unhas existing quality. With this fact, Unhas has participated in this IMHERE competition since Batch I was launched.
During the Batch I competition, Unhas along with UNAIR, UNIB, and UNSUD had been passed up to the site visit stage. Unfortunately, only UNAIR and UNIB are granted. Unhas failure in the Batch I competition does not discourage the university management to take part for the next competition. This is mostly related to the university intention to consistently pursue any opportunity that in somehow will strengthen and speed up its quality improvement. For this reason, Unhas again participates in this Batch II competition.
The process of the proposal development in this Batch II started with the reviewing process towards the old proposal. The university taskforce has spent time to review all possible drawbacks, specifically those mentioned on the reviewers’ comments both from desk evaluation and site visits. To validate and enrich the quality of the Self Evaluation Report and Programs, the task force has also conducted several in-depth discussions with all management levels including University Rector and Vice Rectors, Deans, Heads of University Research Center and Community Services, Bureau Heads for academic affairs, student affairs, financial affairs, planning and information system affairs, and administrative affairs. UniversityInformationCenter also involved in this discussion to get a better sense on the state of the art of university information system. The discussions have indeed produced a common ground regarding the shortcomings of Unhas existing management that leads to the current existing condition. All possible solutions related to the existing problems are discussed intensively as well in the event. All valuable information solicited has indeed included in this document.
Hence, aside of improvement in analysis of SER and soundness of the program, the most significant improvement made from the previous one was the involvement of all parties particularly those involve in management activities including supporting staffs and stronger roles and directions of leader during proposal development. Through such process, the proposal is not belong to the task force but more importantly is belong to the university community particularly the management.
Prior to the finishing touch, the IMHERE taskforce along with the Unhas-BHP personals double checked the consistency of the programs proposed with the overall university strategy elaborated in the BHP documents. A summary of the entire programs along with their triggering problems is also presented to the university top management to get their sense in this manner. With this intensive process, it is expected that this proposal has a better quality than the previous one. If indeed this proposal is granted, it will definitely enhance Unhas capacity in such away there will be no doubt that Unhas will sustain and become more attractive when it is granted autonomy status.
Chapter 2
ENVIRONMENTAL SETTING
This chapter describe the environmental setting of Unhas, including the dynamic strategic environment (the trend of environmental condition that will be faced by the institution) and the prevailing regulation that will affect the institutional management decision (instrumental input). The chapter is concluded with strategic issues as a summary of opportunities and threat to be faced by the institution.
2.1Geographical, Social and Economic Environments of the University
Although Unhas is located in Makassar, the capital city of South Sulawesi, the environment that affects Unhas and affected by Unhas, covers Eastern Indonesia, including Papua, Maluku, Kalimantan, Sulawesi as well as Bali. Moreover, geographically, Makassar has become the center of economic activities in the eastern part of Indonesia.
Administratively, Eastern Indonesia covers 14 provinces from Kalimantan to Papua. The total area of those provinces is 1,166,890 km2 covering about 60% of the area of Indonesia of 1,919,443 km2. Based on the magnitude of this region, it is obvious that Eastern Indonesia is associated with the future of Indonesia.
If we look at the availability of natural resources in the provinces of Eastern Indonesia such as Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Maluku and Papua, the potency is very abundant and variable, from mining resources, forestry resources, agricultural resources, as well as marine resources. The problem is that its utilization is not yet optimal due to limited quantity and quality of human resources capacity as well as lack of infrastructures in this region.
Based on the age structure of the population, the average percentage of people with age between 15 and 19 is roughly 10.5% of the population. This means that, from the 2005 population data, the number of children who is potential to continue their education to university is quiet high. Just for South Sulawesi, the estimated number of children age 15-19 in 2005 was more than 900 thousand children. This is a great potential for having high quality candidates for the new incoming student.
The competition among Eastern Universities in attracting new students, especially high quality candidates, is tighter due to generally low achievement of senior high school graduates in this region. Current data clearly indicate high failure rate of senior high school students in the National Final Exam (UAN) for 2005 in this region. For example, the failure rate in Papua was around 73% in UAN 2005.
From economic perspective, the Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP) per capita in this region in 2003 indicated that it was variable from Rp. 2,402,300 (East Nusa Tenggara) to Rp. 36,946,100 (East Kalimantan), or averaging Rp. 7,511,914. This average figure was just slightly lower than that nationally of Rp. 8,304,300 or of Western Indonesia of Rp 8,857,156 (BPS, 2003). This means that in terms of income, the provinces in this region is quiet comparable to that of Western Indonesia. However, if we look at specifically for South Sulawesi, where most of Unhas students are coming from, its PDRB per capita was only Rp 4,772,000 or just 57.5% the national figure.
Further analysis indicates that monthly expenditure per-capita of South Sulawesi is below Rp 150.000,- Only about one million population (about 12%) with an expenditure more than Rp 300.000,-. This indicates that the purchasing power, including for education purpose, in this province is low. This means that higher tuition fee will be difficult to be imposed.
If we look at contribution of two main sectors, agriculture and industry, on the PDRB in this region, it is clear that agricultural sector contributed significant percentage than industry. At national level, contribution of agriculture and industry on GRDP per capita was 16.58% and 24.65% respectively. Contrary, the data for Eastern Indonesia was 32.32% and 10.33%. But the figure for Eastern Indonesia was variable ranging from 6.55%: 38.75% in East Kalimantan to 49.13%: 8.31% in Central Sulawesi. For the South Sulawesi itself, the data was 35.82% and 11.46% (BPS, 2003). These data strongly indicate that economic activities in this region are mostly driven by agricultural sectors. It is unfortunate, however, since most of these agricultural products are not supported by relevant industries to perform any further processing to generate high value derivative products, except for Palm Oil and Sugar Cane Industries. As a result, most of the agricultural products are exported in the form of raw materials.
In summary, the strategic spatial environments still widely open good opportunities to Unhas to add knowledge contents to each product and service.
2.2Dynamic Strategic Environment
There have been tendencies in driving the dynamic global environment that directly or indirectly affected the development, position, and role of higher education institutions. Basically, these tendencies are interconnected each others, therefore just for simplification, these tendencies are classified into the following groups;
a.Shifting in knowledge paradigm
The shifting in knowledge paradigm from reductionism-determinism into holism-synergetic tends to promote the fusion of knowledge. This shifting creates a significant impactto the development format of knowledge in higher education institutions, including Unhas, that commonly provide traditional teaching and research activities in the groups of disciplines in which each discipline is separated by a great barrier. A change in the education format and the knowledge development into holism format (ability to produce graduates having a holism view with high professional skills in their specific disciplines) can be considered as an opportunity but also a challenge as well.
b.Rapid development in science and technology
A rapid development in science and technology has shifted a resource-based economy into knowledge-based economy. This fact is a challenge for any higher education institution to play more significant role in improving the quality of society techno-structure to avoid entrapping in the process of marginalization. In addition to that, the rapid development in science and technology has also caused a certain competence becoming quickly out of date.
The redefinition of knowledge concept obviously should be followed with the reorientation of education system. Education activities that previously more focused on the transfer of knowledge substances or contents to the students should be more directed to the development of activities that enhance the learning capacity of the students.
A rapid development in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has also driven a significant new challenge to the several assumptions related to the traditional idea of higher education as well as the transformation of higher education format. A distance learning or e-learning (virtual campus) is projected to be a new alternative method equal to the format of traditional education (campus-based education).
c.Globalization
In the AFTA era, there will be opportunities as well as challenges for the higher education institutions to prepare their graduates capable of competing and establishing partnership with workers from ASEAN countries. These opportunities and challenges have forced higher education institutions in Indonesia including Unhas to fundamentally manage teaching and learning process in order to be capable of producing high quality graduate that meet with international requirements or at least regional requirements.
The impact of globalization affected the substance of education program at all levels should be given an equal portion towards the above perspective. Studies on arts, history, language, politics, religion, and culture from other nations related to the adequate comprehensiveness and capability on international dynamics are important topics to assure the successfulness of each profession.
Another important change brought by globalization is a significant shifting in the basic idea of higher education. A debate on the idea between education for all or education democratization and quality of education that in most cases have restricted access to the higher education institutions due to limited funding available to manage continual increase of education operation cost. Privatization of higher education institutions is a sensitive issue that would shift or affect the quality and integrity of values and traditional idealism of higher education. Therefore, all higher education institutions including Unhas should address this issue properly and wisely.
d.Shifting in aspiration
There has been a fundamental shifting in the aspiration towards democratization and transparency of almost all aspects of life including human rights, social justice, and gender either at national or international level. One of the main impact of this shifting is a trust deterioration towards all forms of institutions including the government itself, family and religion, as well as self sufficiency and substance of profession and job at all grass-root activities.
An aspiration shift in the social and politics has been demonstrated in the form of reforming all aspects of social and political institutions after monetary crisis that may bring this nation into a chaotic situation. At this present, the higher education institution is perhaps the only institution capable of functioning as a nation bond since other institutions either social or politics including the government itself is now still searching for their new forms.
In parallel with the external pressure on a holism view, the only way for higher education institutions in order to keep surviving is the idea and realization of partnership with other institutions in responding to the pressure of competition. The idea of partnership, instead of competition, can be regarded as an effort to share with others for the sake of sustainable development. Share with others means that all parties are requested to appreciatively give the benefit to each other. Therefore the respective higher education institutions, with all efforts, should develop healthy and conducive academic atmosphere that promote the development of mimetic culture quality.
e.Learning Enthusiasm and Demand
The tendency of society transforming into a knowledge-based society as described previously has been triggering the learning enthusiasm to be higher and higher. This phenomenon is indicated by the tendency of parents to look for high quality education institutions for their children such as sending their children to well known overseas universities. In the year of 2003, it was estimated that more than 60,000 Indonesian students went to overseas for continuing their education. They spent more than 10 trillion rupiah just for their tuition fees excluding living allowances, a fantastic number that is much higher than the national annual budget for higher education i.e., only 4.3 trillion rupiah. This tendency shows that there has been a significant market segment for higher education institutions as far as they can improve their quality continuously.
f.The Regional Development and Autonomy
The decentralization or regional autonomy which is currently still seeking the ideal format, at least will give an opportunity as well as new responsibility for higher education institutions to actively participate in the development of their region. Higher education is probably the only reliable source capable of providing human resource and technology to meet the regional development needs.
Actually, the problem faced by higher education institutions is the readiness of the higher education institution themselves. At one side, the higher education institutions should focus on overcoming the internal problems to avoid marginalizing, while at the other side, they are expected to give real contributions to the regional development. The limited resources availability of higher education institutions in the region of eastern Indonesia is the main barrier for them to simultaneously perform both roles. It must be admitted, however, the active involvement of higher education institutions in their region will open an opportunity for them to generate new additional incomes to improve their education quality.
2.3. Policies and Regulations
There have been government policies and regulations, particularly related to the policy on the development of higher education that Unhas should take into account during development process of strategic planning. In order to keep consistent with the previous internal regulations, Unhas should also accommodate the government regulation and policy, especially in higher education policy. These include the following policies and regulations as follows: