AN OVERVIEW ON THE COMMERCIALIZATION OF

EDUCATION IN INDONESIA

Education is a fountain which becomes the life source streaming toward every
field in human life. But the recent phenomenons in education activity show that
the “fountain” has been contaminated by a “poisonous element” which has
dangerous thread to human beings. The element is known as commercialization.
The question is what efforts that have to be done to purify our education world
from the commercialization?

Commercialization of education has been fairly recent trend in our country as

the result of the educational curriculum reform in the last decades. The reformation
from 1994 curriculum to KBK and then KTSP and the transformation of evaluation
system from EBTANAS to UAN with score standarization grow a new orientation. It
mainly materializes itself in mushrooming the Study Course Center (Lembaga
Bimbingan Belajar) and private or public school and universities. In a sense, it has
added a financial element to the qualification of attending private or public school and
universities. The commercialization in this discourse is defined as an education
management which places an educational institution as a commercial institution. As
the commercial institution, it will implement its principal as the producer, where in
the economical literary the purpose of the producer is to obtain a profit maximizing in
financial aspect.
Study Course Center; A prosperous land for education as business
At least there are two phenomenon that emerge in education
commercialization discourse. The first phenomenon is the mushrooming of the Study
Course Center appearance that offers an educational service with “ Market Oriented ”
principal. Initially, study cource center is established to help the graduated senior high
school students to continjue their study to the public universities. The tight
competition in pass through the selection becomes an initiative to the study course
builders to establish an institution that aims to help the students pass the public
universities selection. There, the questions of the previous year selection and the
prediction of current year are discussed. Study Course Centers teach a practical way
to in answering the questions easily. During the curricullum change and the
standarization of graduation mark, Study Course Centers widen their wings and
getting popular. They open the new program to all level of study, from elementary
school up to senior high school. With the same materials that have been taught in
school, they offer a strategy to answer questions easily that is known as the smart
solution regardless the main point of education, learning process.
In the quality aspect, this institution competes the school, although in the
formality field, the school can’t be competed since the authority of giving the
graduation certificate for the formal education is held by the Education Department.
Increasing of mark graduation standard every year forces the students to have a smart
way to do their examination although through the short cut. It triggers the students to
join the Study Course Center. Instead of studying all the materials to answer the
questions in the examination conceptually, the students mostly prefer to choose the
easiest way to do their exam. That’s why they join the Study Course Center that offers
smart solution in dealing with the examination and it stuffs in order to get the good
mark and pass the exam which isn’t taught at the school. The result is that education
sector becomes a very promising business trade for the industry called Study Course
Center.
 Like two sides of coin, this phenomenon brings both positive and negative
effect. The positive effect is many students can achieve good mark in their lesson and
to pass the examination. But behind this benefit, there is a metter that can’t be
regarded as trivial one. Although this kinds of education commercialization is legal
one but the result is that the students don’t get the essence of learning. They will have
an instant orientation without regarding the process of learning as the spirit of
education. As the students enjoy the service, Study Cource Center will be the only
owner who hold the authority in this industry.
Local autonomy; A new business opportunity in education
The second phenomenon is the commercialization of education in school.
Reffering to the amandement of constitution no. 22 of 1999, govenrment gave an
authority to every region to manage their own house hold. It means that every region
should plan and manage every life aspects of their society, includes education aspects
and school autonomy. It emerges a new business culture in education,i.e
commercialization. The recent culture is the high cost of school entrance fee that
becomes the biggest complaints for parents especially or the poor. It happen almost in
every school after the policy of school based quality enhance management is
regulated. The policy gives the schools an autonomy to make their own management
as freely. The most common case is when the school set a high fixed tuition for school
entrance fee.
The mistake in interpreting the meaning behind the school autonomy currently
becomes a new trend. In fact, many schools play the policy to get the financial
benefits as much as possible behind the school autonomy mask. The practice of it can
be the trade of many things e.g. school uniform, school building cost, even worse the
trade in getting the chair.
If this phenomenon is not overcome as soon as possible, there will be many
negative impacts that can thread the future of our education. If the schools are
contaminated by manipulation, dishonesty, and other cheat games, the result is the
student’s talent and potency killing. It will happen to the poor students who actually
have brilliant potency and talent. They can’t develop their skill by continuing their
study because of high tuition. The worse impact is the corruption and collusion
culture that grow fertilely in education institution. Just like in business industry, every
activity is “profit purposed”.
Ideally, education aspect should play its roles as the center of the culture and
civilization, spread noble life values, and produce intelligent outputs, not only
intellectually, but also, socially, emotionally and spiritually. But honestly, we have to
admit that the commercialization of education still becomes a barrier to reach the pure
purpose of education.
Now it’s the time for the government to make an action in handling the
practice of education commercialization. It can be done by allocating more fund to the
School Operational Assistance (Bantuan Operasional Sekolah) to sufficient the school
operational needs so that they don’t burden the student’s parents with more tuition. Of
course the assistance must be supervised in order to avoid the deviation of fund
distribution and give a deserve punishment to the irresponsible person. Hopefully by
this program, the education in our country will be pure from commercialization, so
that the students from all economic level can develop their skill and potency and be
able to be the great generation who can build Indonesia in the future.