Mohammad Saleh testifying as the Petitioners’ witness at a material judicial review hearing of the Higher Education Law, Thursday (3/7/2024). Photo by MKRI/Ifa.

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JAKARTA (MKRI) — The Petitioners of case No. 135/PUU-XXI/2023 on the material judicial review of Article 70 paragraph (3) Law No. 12 of 2012 on Higher Education presented Mohammad Saleh, lecturer at the College for Islamic Studies (STAI) Darul Ulum in Banyuanyar, Pemekasan Regency, East Java Province, as a witness. Saleh revealed that his basic salary is only Rp300,000.

“The salary that I receive, my basic salary as a lecturer, is three hundred thousand rupiahs,” he said at a hearing on Thursday, March 7, 2024 in the plenary courtroom.

He also explained that his teaching salary is fifty thousand rupiahs per classroom meeting, with a transport allowance of only fifteen thousand. He only teaches once a week this semester. His salary, he said, is far below the Pamekasan regency minimum wage (UMK) in 2024, which is 2.2 million rupiahs per month.

He admitted to being aware of the salary when signing his employment contract with the college. He said he could not demand much of the nine-year-old college, which had only opened the study program that he has been teaching for two years. Not to mention, the college only relies on the students’ tuition fees (SPP).

He revealed that the tuition fee for the Arabic literature study program is only Rp300,000 per semester. All through the expected eight semesters of college, a student would pay a 2.4 million tuition, plus five hundred thousand development fee and one hundred thousand registration fee. This means the college only receives three million from each student until they graduate.

“So, for the studies, from enrollment until graduation, the total [fees] is three million rupiahs. How can [I] make demands?” Saleh said.

He emphasized that he does not receive any more wage outside of the Rp300,000. “[I receive] no more money. But maybe by the end of the Ramadan month, [I receive] staple food items,” he said. To cover his expenses, he and his wife sell products.

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The Petitioners—Teguh Satya Bhakti, a law lecturer of Krisna Dwipayana University, and Fachri Bachmid, a lecturer at the Muslim University of Indonesia, Makassar—assert that the state’s (government) obligations towards private and state higher education institutions (PTS and PTN) should be fulfilled and both types of institutions should be treated equally. The difference between both is only the establishment and organizers: public ones are established and/or organized by the Government, while private ones by the community.

The imposition of the obligation to provide the basic salaries of private lecturers only to the organizing body clearly has an impact on the inequality/disparity of the basic salaries of private lecturers, the Petitioners asserted. It not only occurs between private and state lecturers, but also among private lecturers. Private institutions under organizing bodies having high financial resources and located in areas with high minimum wages will certainly provide high basic salaries to their lecturers.

For that reason, in the petitum, the Petitioners request that the Court declare the phrase “in accordance with the statutory laws and regulations” in Article 70 paragraph (3) of the Higher Education Law is unconstitutional and not legally binding insofar as it is not interpreted to mean “The management body as referred to in paragraph (2) shall provide base salaries and allowances for lecturers and teaching personnel with funds generated from the National Budget and/or Regional Budget.”

Author       : Mimi Kartika
Editor        : Lulu Anjarsari P.
PR            : Tiara Agustina
Translator  : Yuniar Widiastuti (NL)

Disclaimer: The original version of the news is in Indonesian. In case of any differences between the English and the Indonesian versions, the Indonesian version will prevail.

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