Margareth S. Aritonang, Jakarta – Critics are doubting claims made by lawmakers that more poor people will be able to go to college if the House passes its bill on higher education later this week.

A group of education watchdogs and university students have been campaigning for the House to reject the bill, claiming that it would "aggressively" promote the privatization of higher education and deny poor people access to college.

The bill currently under consideration resembled the Educational Legal Entities Law, which it was designed to replace after the law was struck down by the Constitutional court for promoting aggressive privatization, they said. A member of the House of Representatives Commission X overseeing education denied such claims saying that the bill, once enacted, would grant access to higher education to the poor.

"We don't know why some quarters, including university students, are against the bill, because contrary to what they've said about the bill, it will in fact guarantee access to bright students from poor families who want to get a college education," lawmaker Dedi Gumelar, a member of the working group overseeing deliberations on the bill, said.

Dedi, a member of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), said that the bill would mandate the government to financially support research at all universities in the nation, including private institutions.

Several articles in the bill guaranteed the poor access to higher education, he said, such as Article 76, which mandated that the government pay the registration fees of students who pass university entrance tests.

Meanwhile, Article 77 would oblige the government to allocate 20 percent of seats at state universities for poor students, whom the government would have to support financially, he said.

Article 93 would require the government to allocate 30 percent of national education operational funds, currently 2.5 percent of the state budget for education, for research, he added.

"There will be no reason for the government to not fulfill its responsibility to support research at our universities. Hopefully this will gradually improve the quality of research at Indonesian universities," Dedi said.

United Development Party (PPP) legislator Reni Marlinawati shared Didi's view, saying that the bill will adopt a populist stance on education.

"I believe those who are rejecting the bill haven't read the draft carefully. Or perhaps they only have an old draft and forget that the old one has been revised several times. Early drafts did have provisions that might have led to the privatization of universities, as many activists had assumed, but the later versions have omitted such provisions. I can guarantee that this one, which will be passed during a House plenary session scheduled for Wednesday, will side with the poor and will adopt a stance against state universities being turned into commercial institutions," she said.

Reni added that the bill also had provisions that would guarantee jobs for Indonesian educators at foreign universities in Indonesia.

"This is guaranteed by Article 50 of the bill, which requires foreign universities operating in Indonesia to hire Indonesian lecturers and staff members," Reni said.