**3. The Indonesian education system**

The Indonesian education system is the fourth largest in the world with over 50 million students, 3 million teachers, and 300,000 schools [22]. Pre-school education in Indonesia is not compulsory. There are around 50,000 kindergartens in Indonesia, nearly all of which are privately owned. Children are required to attend 12 years of school. Students can choose among state-run, non-sectarian public schools, and religious schools. There are around 170,000 primary schools, 40,000 junior-secondary schools, and 26,000 high schools. About 84 percent of these schools are under the Ministry of Education and Culture and the remaining 16 percent are under the Ministry of Religious Affairs.

#### *Challenges and Opportunities to Internationalize the Indonesian Higher Education Sector DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110658*

There are two types of high schools in Indonesia: SMA (Sekolah Menengah Atas) and SMK (Sekolah Menengah Kejuruan). SMA students are prepared to continue to higher education, while SMK, as a vocational school, prepares its students to work after finishing their schooling, without moving on to higher education. There are also around 200 international schools in Indonesia. International schools adopt an international curriculum such as IB (International Baccalaureate) or CIE (Cambridge International Examinations) that support English entry qualifications into university programs that are taught in English and offshore [23].

The participation rates in secondary education are high at around 98 percent, but the participation rate in tertiary education is 36 percent [24]. In 2021, around 3.21 million students were enrolled in state universities. State universities are under the purview of the Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education of Indonesia. These universities exclude state universities with religious affiliations that fall under the Ministry of Religion's responsibility [25]. In 2021, there were around three thousand private universities in Indonesia. Private universities in Indonesia operate on budgets that are almost entirely tuition-fee driven, and students get limited, if any, financial support from the government to attend such universities [26].

There has been a concerted push to increase investment and enrolments in the HE sector. The World Bank [4] commented that Indonesia:

*"has drastically increased investment in the sector and instituted important reforms at all levels of education. This has led to rapid increases in access, especially for the poor and in secondary education. The number of higher education students has doubled in five years. Overall spending for higher education has tripled in real terms, to over 30 trillion rupiah. The plans for further expansion are aggressive. The Governments plans include tripling the number of students in technical programs and increasing the number of doctoral students fivefold by 2025. The new Higher Education Law 12/2012 establishes that each district should have its own community college. Indonesia has also been putting policies in place to continue expanding access to senior secondary and higher education."*

As set out by the government, the strategic objectives of the Indonesia HE sector include the following:

"(1) increased quality of higher education learning and student affairs; (2) increased quality of science and technology institutions and higher education; (3) increased relevance, quality and quantity of science and technology and higher education resources; (4) increased research and development relevance and productivity; and (5) Strengthening innovation capacity [27]."

As of 2021, there are 125 state universities in Indonesia. Entering state universities in Indonesia is arguably harder than private universities as the top Indonesian universities are dominated by state universities. There are three ways to qualify for Indonesian state universities: firstly, by invitation. Students, whose grades in the last five semesters of high school meet the university entrance criteria, would be nominated by their schools to receive an invitation to the universities of their choice. Students who do not receive an invitation to enter state universities could still qualify by either sitting for the nationwide university entrance exams or sitting for an independent entry selection examination offered at selected state universities [25].

The Indonesian education framework is complex and fragmented, and contains many internal contradictions. Within the HE system, there are public and private

universities, institutes, schools of higher learning, academies, community colleges, and polytechnics. The key policy challenges for the sector include inconsistent academic quality standards; inconsistent certification, accreditation, supervision, and monitoring techniques; and academics who do not possess post-graduate qualifications and research experience [9, 28]. As with many other countries in the region ([19], 21) there are problems for graduates transitioning to jobs, with most graduates being without full-time employment from four to eight months after graduation, and with many of those in jobs that are unrelated to the professions in which they were educated [29].
