Exploring Indonesian Higher Education Neoliberalization: A Discourse on the Role of Accounting
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.23887/jia.v8i1.63508Keywords:
neoliberalization, higher education, discourse analysis, accounting, IndonesiaAbstract
The neoliberalization of higher education has attracted academic debate and public interest. Though less known by the public, accounting terminologies play a prominent role in that process more particularly in sticking commercial values to the life of universities that eventually made universities far from their own original missions. Applying Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this study explores the neoliberalization of Indonesian higher education by questioning how it took place, what kind of linguistic terminologies or jargon are mostly used, and how accounting concepts, terminologies, and technologies take a role in it. This study found that accounting—through its concepts, jargon, and technologies—helped a lot in making the success of the neoliberalization of Indonesian higher education. Accounting notions like efficiency, productivity, effectiveness, accountability, transparency, and fairness take their cognitive and emotive roles in supporting highly competitive modes of academic life in universities so that the core of neoliberal ideology, that is competition, has been made to be more easily, scientifically, and psychologically justifiable for both individuals and society. Moreover, transactional and commercial motive-based behaviours as an impact of the more liberalized way of life, expand rapidly to become a standard way of acting both on and outside the campuses which accelerates the formation of a more individualistic and competitive Indonesian society. Bureaucratically, the university officials—from the lowest level such as the head of the department up to the Rectors—tend to be more sensitive to achieving a series of standardised, quantitative, technical, short-term, and pragmatic performance indicators dictated by national and international ranking agencies like Webometric than to deal with more ideal, educational, and long-term mission achievement.References
Amo-Agyemang, C. (2017). Understanding Neoliberalism as Governmentality: A Case Study of the IMF and World Bank Structural Adjustment Regime in Ghana. Lapin Yliopisto: Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Lapland.
Asnawi, N., & Setyaningsih, N. D. (2020). Perceived Service Quality in Indonesian Islamic Higher Education Cntext: A test of Islamic Higher Education Service Quality (i-HESQUAL) Model. Journal of International Education in Business, 13(1), 107-130.
Avery, H. G. (1953). Accoung as Language The Accounting Review, 28(1), 83-87.
Azra, A. (2008). Indonesian Higher Education: From Public Good to Privatization. Journal of Asian Public Policy, 1(2), 139–147.
Bessant, S. E. F., Robinson, Z. P., & Ormerod, R. M. (2005). Neoliberalism, New Public Management and the Sustainable Development Agenda of Higher Education: History, Contradictions and Synergies. Environmental Education Research 21(3), 417–432.
Bloomfield, R. J. (2008). Accounting as the Language of Business. Accounting Horizons, 22(4), 433–436. doi: 10.2308/acch.2008.22.4.433
Carroll, T. (2004). The World Bank's Socio-institutional Neoliberalism: A Case Study from Indonesia. Asiaview.
Craig, R. J., & Amernic, J. H. (2004). Enron Discourse: The Rhetoric of Resilient Capitalism. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 15(6-7), 813–851.
Cunningham, C. E. (1988). Short Note: The Indonesian Second Higher Education Project and the Establishment of Inter-university Centers in Social Studies at the University of Indonesia and Gadjah Mada University. Indonesia Circle, 45, 48-51.
Cunningham, C. E. (2007). Short Note: The Indonesian Second Higher Education Project and the Establishment of Inter-university Centers in Social Studies at the University of Indonesia and Gadjah Mada University. Indonesia Circle, 45(March), 48-51.
Elliott, R. (1996). Discourse Analysis: Exploring Action, Function and Conflict in Social Texts. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 14(6), 65-68.
Fairclough, N. (1993). Critical Discourse Analysis and the Marketization of Public Discourse: The Universities. Discourse & Society, 4(2), 133-168.
Fairclough, N. (2001). Critical Discourse Analysis as a Method in Social Scientific Research. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (pp. 121-138). London: Sage Publications.
Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge.
Fairclough, N. (2004). Critical Discourse Analysis in Researching Language in the New Capitalism: Overdetermination, Transdisciplinarity, and Textual Analysis In L. Young & C. Harrison (Eds.), Systemic Functional Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis: Studies in Social Change (pp. 103-122). London: Continuum.
Fairclough, N. (2005). Critical Discourse Analysis in Transdisciplinary Research. In R. Wodak & P. A. Chilton (Eds.), A New Agenda in (Critical) Discourse Analysis Theory, Methodology and Interdisciplinarity (pp. 53-70). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Fairclough, N. (2013). Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language (Second ed.). Abingdon: Routledge.
Ferguson, J. (2007). Analysing Accounting Discourse: Avoiding the “fallacy of internalism”. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 20(6), 912-934.
Gaus, N., & Hall, D. (2015). Neoliberal Governance in Indonesian Universities: The Impats upon Academy. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol. 35 Iss 9/10 pp. , 35(9/10), 666-682.
Graham, C. (2013). Teaching Accounting as a Language. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 24(2), 120–126. doi: 10.1016/j.cpa.2012.01.006
Harvey, D. (2007). Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 610(1), 22-44.
Heron, T. (2008). Globalization, Neoliberalism and the Exercise of Human Agency. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 20(1-4), 85–101.
Idrus, N. (1999). Towards quality higher education in Indonesia. Quality Assurance in Education, 7(3), 134-141.
Janks, H. (2006). Critical Discourse Analysis as a Research Tool. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 18(3), 329-342. doi: 10.1080/0159630970180302
Jorgensen, M. W., & Phillips, L. J. (2002). Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method (z-lib.org).pdf>. London: Sage Publications.
Klees, S. J. (2012). World Bank and Education Ideological Premises and Ideological Conclusions Education Strategy in the Developing World: Revising the World Bank’s Education Policy (Vol. 16, pp. 151–171). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Marginson, S. (2012). The "Public" Contribution of Universities in an Increasingly Global World. In B. Pusser, K. Kempner, S. Marginson & I. Ordorika (Eds.), Universities and the Public Sphere: Knowledge Creation and State Building in the Era of Globalization (pp. 7-26). New York: Routledge.
Michael, S. O., & Kretovics, M. A. (2005). Financing Higher Education in Global Market. New York: Algora Publishing.
Mok, K. H., & Lo, Y. W. (2009). From the State to the Market?: China’s Education at a Crossroads In D. Hill & E. Rosskam (Eds.), The Developing World and State Education: Neoliberal Depredation and Egalitarian Alternatives (pp. 216-234). New York: Routledge.
Mooney, F. E. (1963). United States-Indonesian Co-operation in Higher Education: 1950-1961 The Journal of Higher Education, 34(2), 94-96.
Navarro, V. (2007). Neoliberalism as a Class Ideology, or, the Political Causes of the Growth of Inequality International Journal of Health Services, 37(1), 47–62.
Peters, M. A. (2001). Poststructuralism, Marxism, and Neoliberalism: Between Theory and Politics. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Peters, M. A. (2021). Neoliberalism as Political Discourse: The Political Arithmetic of Homo Oeconomicus. In M. Sardoc (Ed.), The Impacts of Neoliberal Discourse and Language in Education: Critical Perspectives on a Rhetoric of Equality, Well-Being, and Justice (pp. 69-85). New York: Routledge.
Phillips, N., Sewell, G., & Jaynes, S. (2008). Applying Critical Discourse Analysis in Strategic Management Research. Organizational Research Methods, 11(4), 770-789.
Pujiningsih, S., Suryani, A. W., Larasati, I. P., & Nurzehan, S. Y. S. (2023). Political Hegemony and Accounting Discourse: Valuing Nationalization. Asian Review of Accounting, 31(3).
Purba, J. T. (2015). Building Higher Education Institution Capacity in Indonesia through Strategic Faculty Development. Asian Journal of Scientific Research, 5(6), 291-302. doi: 10.18488/journal.2/2015.5.6/2.6.291.302
Riahi-Belkaoui, A. (2000). Accounting Theory. New York: Business Press.
Sardoc, M. (2021). The Language of Neoliberalism in Education In M. Sardoc (Ed.), The Impacts of Neoliberal Discourse and Language in Education: Critical Perspectives on a Rhetoric of Equality, Well-Being, and Justice (pp. 1-13). New York: Routledge.
Saunders, D. B. (2017). Neoliberal Ideology and Public Higher Education in the United States. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 8(1), 41-77.
Selchow, S. (2017). Negotiations of the "New World: The Omnipresence of "Global" as a Political Phenomenon. Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Verlag.
Sinha, S. (2005). Neoliberalism and Civil Society: Project and Possibilities. In A. Saad-Filho & D. Johnston (Eds.), Neoliberalism A Critical Reader (pp. 163-169). London: Pluto Press.
Smeltzer, S., & Hearn, A. (2015). Student Rights in an Age of Austerity?: ‘Security’: Freedom of Expression and the Neoliberal University. Social Movement Studies, 14(3), 352–358.
Sunarto, K. (2017). The Rise of Quality Assurance in Indonesian Higher Education. In M. Syah & Q. T. N. Do (Eds.), The Rise of Quality Assurance in Asian Higher Education (pp. 67-86). Cambridge: Elsevier.
Suryanti, E. W. (2019). TIeningkatan Mutu Pendidikan Peruruan Tinggi sebagai Alternatif Penanggulangan Pengangguran Terdidik Likhitaprajna Jurnal Ilmiah, 21(2), 188-194.
Syah, D., Basaruddin, T., Hartono, D. M., Suganda, E. H., Ardhana, I. B., Ashadi, H. W., & Susanto, K. H. (2005). Improving Quality of Higher Education: Lesson Learned from Quality of Undergraduate Education Project. Journal of Agriculture and Rural Development in the Tropics and Subtropics 8(83 (Supplement)), 248-255.
Taylor, S. (2013). What is Discourse Analysis? London: Bloomsbury Publishing
Thomas, R. M. (1973). Toward Quality in the Face of Quantity: The Role of Consortia in Indonesian Higher Education. International Review of Education, 19(4), 489-495.
Titscher, S., Meyer, M., Wodak, R., & Vetter, E. (2000). Methods of Text and Discourse Analysis (B. Jenner, Trans.). London: Sage Publications.
Van Dijk, T. A. (2008). Discourse and Context: A Sociocognitive Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Verger, A. (2009). GATS and Higher Education: State of Play of the Liberalization Commitments. Higher Education Policy, 22(2), 225-244. doi: 10.1057/hep.2008.28
Wodak, R. (2001). What CDA is about - A Summary of its History, Important Concepts, and Developments. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (pp. 1-13). London: Sage Publications.
Wodak, R. (2008). Introduction: Discourse Studies - Important Concepts and terms. In R. Wodak & Krzyzanowski (Eds.), Qualitative Discourse Analysis in the Social Sciences (pp. 1-29). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Yates, L., Woelert, P., Millar, V., & O'Connor, K. (2017). New Public Management and the Changing Governance of Universities. In L. Yates, P. Woelert, V. Millar & K. O'Connor (Eds.), Knowledge at the Crossroads (pp. 59-75). Singapore: Springer Science+Business Media.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Ali Djamhuri, Wiwik Hidajah Ekowati
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
JIA (Jurnal Ilmiah Akuntansi) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) before and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges and earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
1.png)
