Knowledge and the Market: The Internationalisation of Indonesian Higher Education

Abstract

This study aims to identify and explain the global forces that are re-shaping public higher education in the local context by studying the case of internationalisation of Indonesian higher education. It is explored in two themes of the internationalisation process in that country in terms of the overall purpose of Indonesian public education. The first theme is the rejection of privatisation but acceptance of internationalisation. I argue that, despite the rejection of privatisation in order to maintain Indonesia’s commitment to public education, the forces of internationalisation carry with them the same unequalising processes of class reconfiguration in this era of global neoliberal capitalism. Internationalisation receives wide acceptance. It is believed that the strategy serves national interests by boosting the international competitiveness of Indonesia’s developing economy. It also fuels national pride by positioning this developing country as a global player. Unlike privatisation, internationalisation becomes more acceptable because it is attached to the more respectable knowledge internationalisation rhetoric. Connected to the first, the second theme concerns the social meanings of ‘internationalisation’. The understanding of internationalisation as the intellectuals’ pursuit of knowledge on a global scale is a very old one and probably contributes to its resilience today. However, the increasing commodification of higher education since the post-1970 period of economic globalisation has altered the meaning of ‘knowledge’ in significant ways. The current ‘internationalisation’ term carries with it two contradictory meanings – ‘knowledge’ as the international creation and exchange of the symbolic sphere and knowledge as a marketable commodity in the economic sphere. The contradiction between ‘knowledge internationalisation’ and ‘market internationalisation’ appears side by side in the language and practices of those who work in Indonesian higher education. Indonesian higher education is caught in the intersection between internationalisation with its commitment to universal knowledge ideals on the one hand, and the market internationalisation ideas driven by contemporary economic globalisation on the other. Both might exist as the two sides of the same coin, but what matters is which dominates more, knowledge as the symbolic means of human discourse or knowledge as a commodity for sale in the global market?