Rabby Pramudatama – A coalition of education watchdogs and university students is campaigning to reject a new law on higher education that is slated for endorsement by the House of Representatives next week.

The group said that the new Higher Education Law, which would replace the educational legal entities, carried the same spirit as that of the latter, which had been revoked by the Constitutional Court for promoting aggressive privatization of higher education.

"Article 77 of the bill defines three categorizes of universities: autonomous, semi-autonomous and limited autonomous," Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation (LBH) public lawyer Alghifari Aqsa said on Sunday.

By bestowing autonomy on universities, the law would allow the management of colleges to charge students exorbitant tuition fees, which would in turn drive away poor students. The coalition was convinced that the bill was a rehash of the controversial 2008 Educational Legal Entities.

The controversial law required all educational institutions to become legal entities within six years of the law taking effect. The legal entities were given autonomy to develop their own resources and build academic capacities, as well as to mobilize their own financial resources.

"We have learned from the facts that tuition fees have soared in all seven universities that have been turned into autonomous entities based on the BHP Law," Alghifari said.

Head of the University of Indonesia's (UI) Law School Student Executive Board Ali Abdillah said that aggressive privatization had made it difficult for students from poor families to enter UI.

He said that there was now a certain method to gauge the financial ability of prospective students at the UI. Ali also said he suspected that the autonomous status of the UI had made the institution less answerable to the public.

"The university has built so many infrastructure projects without transparent accountability reporting. This is what happens at the UI. There are many competent enough students who were reluctant to apply to the UI simply because they had no money," he said. University of Indonesia was the first university to be turned into an autonomous legal entity.

The UI currently charges between Rp 100,000 (US$11) and Rp 7.5 million per semester per student, depending on the program and the financial capability of the student. It also charges a one time entrance fee of Rp 5 million to Rp 25 million.

In 2010, the Constitutional Court scrapped the controversial law on educational legal entities, which critics said had turned universities into corporations.