Jakarta's Pramuka Street intersection is well known for its essay-production services, as Indonesian universities continue to be dogged by the problem of ghostwritten essays. By paying a sum, a student can graduate without making much effort writing the final-year dissertation.

A graft watchdog in Indonesia has sounded a red alert for the education sector as it recorded some 40 cases of corruption in 2012, causing losses to the state of around Rp139 billion (US$14.4 million).

Anticorruption efforts are by no means a new concept in Indonesia. But since the 1950s, corruption has been mostly investigated and prosecuted, while preventative methods have been overlooked. A new collaboration involving more than 100 universities across the archipelago wants to change that.

A scandal involving 49 students who sought places in an Egypt's prestigious university has been revealed. Instead of enrolling in the promised university, the students ended up in Malaysia where 15 were discovered doing odd jobs to support themselves. Moreover in what may be a bureaucratic cross-proposes the Indonesia's Ministry of national education is not in charge of verifying the student's process because is the Ministry of religious affaires the one responsible for students who apply to Islamic Universities abroad.

The Ministry of National Education of Indonesia proposed a bill to further deregulate the Nation's universities. But the privatization of leading universities will lead, according to the Indonesia Corruption Watch, to the exclusion of the children from less well-off families. The high costs of university entrance and passage in the way have indeed tended to either reduce or eliminate students from the poorer provinces of Indonesia. Major corruption cases break out in Indonesia on a regular basis and there is strong evidence that higher university tuition fees increased corruption in the sector.