18
UNIVERSITAS TERBUKA INDONESIA
OPEN POLICY: SECURING THE RIGHTS TO
KNOWLEDGE AND HIGHER EDUCATION
Daryono & Sri Sedyainingsih18.1 Background
Indonesia has been preoccupied by long lasting issues related to
access, equity and quality of higher education. Just in a recent decade,
higher education access has improved substantially by the increased
higher education participation rate. This becomes possible due to the
progressive educational policy to allocate twenty percent of state budget
into education sector as it was only five percent. The progressive policy,
however, has not yet resolved the problem of quality and equity issues
between Java where major quality higher education institutions are
located and out of Java where the scarcity of quality higher educational
resources are present. This is also worsened by the geographical
conditions in which they are not well distributed. As the only Open
University in Indonesia, Universitas Terbuka (UT) has been mandated to
open access to higher education and reduce knowledge gaps by
producing quality of educational materials available to public. Since its
establishment, UT utilizes open and flexible learning to enable learner
studying on their needs. In 2012, UT established its open policy for
educational materials produced by UT. This policy aims at users of