UNIVERSITAS TERBUKA AND CLASS FORMATION IN INDONESIA(First Main Session "Higher Education & Class Formation in SE Asia",AN INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM THE IMPACT OF HIGHER EDUCATION ON SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION IN ASIA & THE PACIFIC)

Universitas Terbuka, as stated by Prof. Takahashi, is intended to undertake three missions. First, to increase access to higher education for high school graduates. Second, to provide further education for those who are already on the job. Third, to improve the quality of primary and secondary school teachers. However, in 1992 the UT students\u27 population (170.000) was dominated by primary and secondary school teachers (60 %). The others were non-working students fresh from senior high school (6 %) and working students (34 %). These figures show that the second and third missions are met satisfactorily but not the first one. This paper examines the possible influence of UT on class formation in Indonesia, which has a plural society. Since UT is only eight years old and only released graduates in the last three years, it is too early to conduct a field study on the influence of UT on the class formation in Indonesia. Therefore this paper discuss the UT study systems, people\u27s attitudes toward higher education, and Indonesian plural society. The purposed hypotheses are : 1. The UT learning system is not conducive to the formation of an ethnic, descendant, family, and religious social stratification. 2. The UT learning system is more conducive to forming a job and economic social strati fi cati on