Higher Education as an Instrument of Decolonisation: The Community Service Programme in Indonesia, 1950–1969

Abstract

This article examines the origins of community service in Indonesia’s higher education (HE) system during the early years of its development in the 1950s and 1960s. Community service helped to establish a wide variety of connections between HE and Indonesian society, but it has received little scholarly attention and is virtually neglected in contemporary indicators of HE performance even though a growing priority for the system in the Global South is its connection with local communities. This article problematises the enactment of community service as the ‘third mission’ of HE in Indonesia and its practice during these early years. By using an historical approach and drawing on archival materials as data sources, the article argues that the enactment of community service reflected the spirit of decolonisation in Indonesian society. Decolonisation meant that Indonesia wished not only to dispense with the Dutch colonial legacy in HE but also to develop an education system that would be Indonesian in character. Although this third mission of HE was clearly embodied in the community service programme, in later years the emphasis on decolonisation in education policy was reduced.