Unpaid incentives: Reform of Indonesia’s higher education system long overdue

The controversy over the government’s refusal to pay civil servant lecturers their overdue performance allowance (tunjangan kinerja, or tukin) — which they are legally entitled to — certainly highlights the vulnerability of academic jobs in Indonesia. But it also exposes how politics and bureaucracy are undermining real reform of the country’s higher education system.

With a basic salary that is below the minimum standard of living, the tukin allowance is essential for Indonesian lecturers, as it greatly helps them cope with rising living costs.

On 3 February 2025, hundreds of lecturers staged a rally in front of the State Palace in Jakarta to demand that the Higher Education, Science and Technology Ministry pay allowances that have been overdue since 2020. During the protest, the All-Indonesia Alliance of Civil Servant Lecturers under the Education, Science and Technology Ministry (Adaksi) threatened to go on a strike should the ministry continue to turn a deaf ear to their demand for a better remuneration.

The uproar over tukin, however, is more than just about money. It also reflects everything that is wrong with the country’s higher education system.

Poor welfare of Indonesian academics

Tukin is a performance allowance for public servants who win a good work assessment ranking.

The initial concept of tukin was developed through the 1999 revision of Law No. 8 of 1974 on the Conditions of Employment for Civil Servants. The law mandates a type of allowance for public servants who have more work responsibility and higher achievements. This concept was further developed in subsequent laws that replaced the 1999 law and its related regulations.

The implementation of tukin is not without its controversies. Performance indicators for public servants have been defined through the annual performance form called Sasaran Kinerja Pegawai (SKP). Completing this form can be challenging in typical academic positions where there is no clear distinction between research and teaching tenured tracks. In such roles, lecturers are expected to fulfil responsibilities that encompass teaching, research, and community engagement. Every semester, lecturers are also required to submit an additional evaluation sheet detailing their workload (Beban Kerja Dosen, BKD), which many consider overly complicated.

Another issue is the difference in remuneration standards across ministries. The allowance for public servants under the Ministry of Finance, for example, is higher than other ministries.

But the situation is much worse for lecturers, many of whom have tenured employment in public universities and thus hold public servant status. They simply have not yet received any performance allowance.

This is a major problem because the basic salary for early and mid-career lecturers is below the minimum wage in Jakarta. Without additional allowances, how can Indonesian academics survive?

For a long time, Indonesian lecturers have been indoctrinated to see their profession as pengabdian (service) and thus honourable in the eyes of society in general. It is this false morality that has prevented many of them from actively advocating for their rights.

It is common for lecturers to seek better paid managerial jobs at universities and engage in consulting projects. Additionally, some may seek to establish patronage relationships with ruling elites in pursuit of bureaucratic roles in government institutions, or commissioner positions in state-owned or private enterprises. The latter can earn an income a hundred times greater than their monthly salary from campus. This situation is understandable, but it frequently gives rise to serious conflicts of interest. It can also cause campuses to function as a means of legitimising the political powerful.

Other academics with less influence are forced to resort to side hustles such as tutoring, selling food products or even becoming drivers for motorcycle ride-hailing services (ojek). Having double or even triple jobs outside campus obviously distracts them from essential academic activities, such as producing good-quality research.

It is not surprising that, given the structural challenges they face, dishonesty and cheating in the pursuit of career promotion requirements occur among Indonesian academics. One recent scandal revealed that the requirement of publishing in academic journals to win professorial appointment had been tainted by unethical practices, such as submissions to predatory journals and colluding with assessors.

The chaotic state of higher education has prompted organised responses by concerned lecturers. In 2023, the Campus Workers Union (Serikat Pekerja Kampus, SPK) was established in Indonesia and now has more than one thousand members.

SPK has been involved in various advocacy effort, including regarding industrial issues, working conditions on campuses, academic integrity and academic freedom. While this is a good start, SPK has not yet succeeded in registering itself as a state-recognised union that has the legal right to negotiate industrial issues.

This puts SPK in a weak position in the face of power politics.

Politics and bureaucracy hinder progress  

A tiny ray of hope flickered when, on 23 December 2020, the then Minister of Education and Culture, Nadiem Makarim, issued a regulation to implement the tukin payments. Then, on  11 October 2024, just nine days before the end of his term in office, Nadiem issued a ministerial decision that regulated payment details, including the amount for eligible positions and a start date of payment of 1 January 2025.

However, when Satryo Soemantri Brodjonegoro took office as the new minister, the tukin regulations were shown to be a false hope. The Secretary General of the Ministry, Togar Mangihut Simatupang, said the overdue 2020-2024 tukin allowance for lecturers would never be paid because “it was not allocated in the state budget.”

In a letter to all public university leaders, Togar blamed Nadiem for not following “a proper bureaucratic process” for disbursing tukin, which, he said, should include proposing a presidential regulation and winning approval from the Minister of Finance.

As for the late payment of tukin for this year, Togar put the blame for this on the change of the ministry’s name to Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology. This excuse that is hard to accept, given administrative staff (tenaga kependidikan administrative) who are not lecturers under the ministry have received tukin. Moreover, the new ministry recently allocated a budget for a new program to develop Garuda’s outstanding high schools – a program supposedly under the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education.

The bureaucratic chaos behind the failure to pay tukin is the result of internal power struggles in the higher education ministry. While the ministers and the names of ministries that navigate higher education change, the underlying messy system remains and becomes a tool for power consolidation by the new administration. The latter, unfortunately, acts as an obstacle to reform. This was apparently the reason Nadiem had felt the need to set up his own “shadow team” while in office in an attempt to implement his programs.

The internal power struggles sometimes surface, indicating a renegotiation of power between bureaucratic officials and the appointed minister. A “demonstration” held by a group of ministry officials in mid-January 2025 protesting Minister Satryo Soemantri Brodjonegoro’s personal attitude and an accusation of unfair dismissal of a subordinate is a case in point.

The real problem facing Indonesian higher education

The problems undermining higher education in Indonesia are bigger than just tukin. A proper salary should not be subject to additional administrative standards such as the SKP and BKD, as such standards often function as instruments for bureaucratic control. Fair compensation should be provided unconditionally.

Additionally, under the current predatory system, even full payment of the massive tukin debt would not be enough to adequately address the problem of academic exploitation. Instead, it could create jealousy and tensions among lecturers from private universities and fellow civil servants, which will further weaken attempts to formalise an effective campus workers‘ union.

Academic precarity, bureaucratic politics, and the absence of a strong union for higher-education workers are the perfect storm that has created a deeply flawed higher-education system. Without radical reform, higher education will not be able to contribute to Indonesia’s political reform and is, in fact, at risk of being part of the very corrupt system that it tries to fix.