In Indonesia, PhD Students Speak Out About Bad Supervision

In Indonesia, students studying for a PhD — the highest degree a university can award — are speaking out about poor treatment from their supervisors. Many say their professors rarely meet with them, ask them to do unfair tasks, or simply ignore their research needs. Eleven PhD students shared their stories for this report, and several asked not to be named because they feared it could hurt their careers. The problem is drawing attention just as Indonesia's government pushes to double the number of PhD graduates in the country by 2045.

One math lecturer named Rully Charitas Prahmana noticed a big difference when he visited a university in the United States. He was shocked to see a professor go cycling with PhD students on the weekend. Back home in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, that kind of relaxed, friendly relationship between professors and students is almost unheard of. Prahmana says he is already seen as unusual just for sometimes meeting students at a warung, which is a small local food stall or restaurant.

Many PhD students in Indonesia say they only see their supervisors at formal meetings to sign paperwork. They rarely get real guidance on their research projects. 'I met my supervisors routinely, but instead of supervising me, they were gossiping about other lecturers,' said one student. This leaves many students feeling alone as they try to complete difficult, years-long research projects.

Some students described being asked to spend their own money for their research. One student said she had to pay about $12 every week, for a whole year, just to access each place where she collected samples for her science work. In total, she spent around $1,700 in a single year. That is a huge amount in Indonesia, where the average monthly salary is only about $200.

Indonesia's government wants to grow the number of people with PhD degrees from about 75,000 to 125,000 by the year 2045. The country's minister for higher education, Brian Yuliarto, says having more highly educated people will help Indonesia's economy grow. Right now, Indonesia has only 272 PhD holders for every one million people. By comparison, the United States has about 14,000 PhD holders per million people.

To help pay for more PhDs, a government fund has set aside money for 2,500 new scholarships this year. About half of those will let students study at universities in other countries. The rest will support students studying partly or fully inside Indonesia. But some experts worry that simply adding more scholarship money is not enough to fix the deeper problems.

Berry Juliandi, a dean at IPB University in the city of Bogor, says that not enough Indonesian universities are ready to give students a high-quality PhD experience. He argues that the new money is not backed up by strong rules or plans to improve the way professors supervise students. Indonesia has 4,303 higher-education institutions in total. Only 226 of them are rated 'highly qualified' by the country's National Accreditation Agency for Higher Education.

Even at those top schools, bad behavior between supervisors and students is common. So far this year, Indonesia's education ministry has recorded 874 cases of inappropriate behavior. These include ethical misconduct, violence, sexual harassment, and abuse of power. One PhD student, Andik Wijayanto, says this kind of behavior stops scientists from thinking freely and asking bold questions.

Indonesia's publishing rules have also caused trouble. In 2017, the government found that thousands of professors had never published research in respected international journals. New rules were put in place requiring all university teachers with advanced degrees to publish in high-quality, approved journals. But this plan had an unexpected downside — some academics ended up publishing in so-called 'predatory journals,' which charge fees to publish papers but do not check the work properly.

In 2021, the government introduced new rules against dishonest research practices like making up data, copying others' work, and listing fake authors on papers. A new rule signed in February of this year also asks universities to measure 'scientific integrity' when they review how well lecturers are doing their jobs. Many hope these steps will lead to real improvements for PhD students across the country.