A Question to Indonesian Academic Culture: With or Without Skripsi?

On January 27th, 2012, the Ministry of Education and Culture (Kemendikbud) through Directorate General of High Education (DITJEN DIKTI) under the tenure of Mr. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono issued a regulation in Letter of DITJEN DIKTI No. 152/E/T/2012 that undergraduate students had to have paper publication in scientific journal. This regulation was proposed and thus constituted because the scientific paper publication in and from Indonesia was very few in number.

Compared to other countries in South East Asia like Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, Indonesia is left behind. According to SCImago Journal and Country Rank (www.scimagojr.com) Indonesia is now ranked 57 out of 239 countries; meanwhile Singapore is 32, Malaysia 36, and Thailand 43. This rank is determined by the number of documents published and the citable documents from 1996-2014. Indonesia has the total number of 32.355 documents and 30.770 citable documents.

The number one and two in this list are United States of America (USA). USA has 8.626.193 published documents and 7.876.234, and China has 3.617.355 published documents and 3.569.652 citable documents. Looking at this, we can infer that Indonesia is tremendously left behind in scientific development. On the other hand, the civilization of a country is pivotally determined by how much advanced the country is in both natural and social sciences.

The Ministry of Research, Technology, and High Education (Kemenristekdikti) under the tenure of Mr. President Joko Widodo, however, has been proposing the possibility of removing Skripsi (Thesis for Indonesian undergraduate programs) from the requirement of graduation. The reason of this proposal is to prevent cheating on making the Skripsi by paying other party to make one or by plagiarizing. As the substitution, students can opt for community service or research report in laboratory, instead of Skripsi.

In my view, the proposal of removing Skripsi from graduation requirement seems to backlash the idea of imposing the undergraduate students to have at least one paper publication in scientific journal.

It’s crystal clear that Skripsi is just another form of scientific paper, which there are some scientific methods and materials that will introduce the undergraduate students to research and scientific conducts. Frankly speaking, without joining the research club in campus, Skripsi is the very first door for undergraduate students to get to know how to conduct scientific research and then make a scientific paper out of it.

Because of the regulation in DITJEN DIKTI No. 152/E/T/2012, my university creates a journal publishing system called Nexus classified into various expertises according to the different faculties and departments for its students. In order to fulfill the graduation requirement, the students are asked not only to make Skripsi, but also to make a scientific paper out of their Skripsi to be published in the Nexus. Nevertheless, it is not compulsory for them to publish their paper in Nexus. Students are encouraged to publish their paper in national or even international journal.

Besides getting familiar with scientific conduct, the students also become well-aware of how scientific publication works. The manuscript they send must be processed by the reviewer first before proceeded to the editor, and then there will be communication between the author and the editor regarding to the revision of manuscript. Finally, they will be notified when the paper is published.

Once it is published, the students then have an academic track record of publishing a scientific paper, and their works may be cited in the future by people out there in need either because of assignments or new further research reference. Hence, I believe this is the very first step to introduce and persuade our people to be active in conducting research and publicizing their scientific works.

However, eliminating Skripsi from graduation requirement will diminish the opportunity mentioned above. In fact, this will discourage us to have more scientific paper publication and to have more understanding why this is very important both for our personal academic career and science development. Don’t forget that not everyone has opportunity to continue their study to Postgraduate Program so that they can familiarize themselves with Thesis.

Furthermore, I think removing Skripsi won’t be a good solution to cheating. To begin with, cheating is about sense of morality. Just because there is a possibility for students to cheat, doesn’t mean we necessarily remove examination as parameter of whether students already understand the subjects from our educational system. Just because there is possibility of stealing and corruption, doesn’t mean we stop using money as our currency.

What we must work on here is to educate our society better that cheating is not okay at all, that having a high sense of morality is important, and that honesty matters. This is of course somewhat abstract, but not impossible. We need to educate our people that it is not about avoiding punishment, but to have honor and pride in themselves, especially by achieving something, similarly to what Confucius once said “If the people are ruled by laws and punishment they will seek to avoid punishment but not truly have moral character. If the people are ruled by virtue and propriety, they will themselves wish to be moral.”

Imposing Skripsi as a graduation requirement is also important in educating our people. By making Skripsi, the undergraduate students are obligated to look for updated papers to support their research as reference. They will have to read and understand the references they have.

This will necessitate the students to update their knowledge and thus to read more. The reading culture is something rare to be found nowadays in Indonesia. People love to watch, they love to talk, but they are inconvenient to read. There were times when I was asked by my friends to explain the paper they had to review, or when my friends asked me to explain certain issues they needed to write about for their assignments because they didn’t know much about the information they should be engaged with. This happened because they don’t really like reading.

Facing the next era of globalization, obviously our Indonesians are required to be very knowledgeable and updated in the field they are assigned. Not only to be competitive in employment, but also to be involved in preserving our human civilization. Skripsi, anyway, can be an important instrument to preserve this important habit.

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