ABSTRACT
In this chapter I will briefl y summarize the major conclusions of the analysis, feed these back to the theoretical frames and the literature, and explore their broader relevance for policy and practice in higher education in relation to international assistance. The general theme of the study is that goals, efforts and outcomes generated by international assistance in Indonesia facilitated and at times actively encouraged changing patterns of State-university relations from direct State control towards policies and steering mechanisms inducing increased institutional autonomy. The book indicates that while there has not been so much hard evidence for a causal relationship between international assistance and university autonomy, there was plenty of empirical evidence of a mutually reinforcing dynamic involving donors and domestic reformers that continues to have a profound impact on the way higher education is managed in Indonesia; a process of evolving policies and goals (chapter 2), changing policy instruments (chapter 3) and a picture of varied but substantive outcomes (chapter 4). Without this dynamic, and hence without this relation with international assistance, Indonesia’s state university system would be less developed overall, less differentiated, less equipped and academically manned, less decentralized, and less autonomous from government and the bureaucratic polity. Most of its institutions would have much less capacity to diversify their resource basis, and become fi nancially autonomous.
