Western Sydney University to open campus in Indonesia

Australia now has the only two foreign university campuses in Indonesia after Western Sydney University launched its new East Java campus on Thursday.

Western Sydney University vice-chancellor Barney Glover. Picture: NewsWire / Monique Harmer

Australian universities will operate the only two independent foreign campuses in Indonesia from next year when Western Sydney University opens its doors to local and foreign undergraduate students in the country’s second largest city, Surabaya.

The move is a breakthrough for Australia’s university sector which views the Indonesian student market as a significant growth area but has previously struggled to gain entrance to Southeast Asia’s most important economy.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare, in Surabaya for the ‘soft opening” of the WSU campus on Thursday after leading a delegation of university executives to India to explore similar opportunities, said the foreign campuses were an opportunity for Australia and Indonesia to forge closer bonds.

“International education is not a one-way street,” Mr Clare said. “Not everyone can afford to come to Australia to study. But Australian universities can come to you.”

Both India and Indonesia are important markets for Australia’s education sector given their massive youth populations and corresponding need to build skills capacity.

Monash University was the first to open an independently-owned foreign campus in Indonesia in 2021 under a deal secured as part of the Indonesia Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IA_CEPA), a sprawling free trade deal ratified that year.

The University of Central Queensland also operates a joint-venture campus in Jakarta, but WSU is only the second university to secure a license to operate a stand-alone institution.

WSU Vice Chancellor Barney Glover said the campus would take its first few hundred undergraduate students in September 2024, but aimed to be teaching up to 3000 Indonesian and foreign students in coming years.

“We’re very keen to raise our profile in Indonesia because we would like to not only attract students to our campus here in Indonesia, but also to come and study in western Sydney,” Professor Glover said.

“Indonesia is a very important and growing market for international education. It’s a huge economy in its own right with a growing middle class that has the capacity to pay international student fees.”

The university would seek opportunities for research collaboration as a condition of its license in Indonesia, where not all local operators have welcomed the entrance of foreign players, and saw growth potential in short-courses and “micro-credentials”, he added.

The Surabaya ‘vertical campus’ _ to be housed across several floors of an office block _ is the second international campus for WSU which has been operating in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City for 15 years. It aims to open a campus in the southern Indian state of Bangalore by 2026.

President Joko Widodo has championed the liberalisation of Indonesia’s tertiary sector as a means of raising the quality of education in a country where some 40 per cent of the population is under 24.

Indonesian director general of higher education, research, and technology Nizam said the new campus would give local students a more “accessible and cost-effective” opportunity to attend a world-class foreign university without the need to go abroad.

“For the country, it helps reduce the outflow of foreign exchange. For existing public and private universities, the presence of world-class campuses can serve as both a collaboration partner and a reference to enhance educational quality,” Professor Nizam said.

But, he added, there should also be reciprocal opportunities for Indonesian campuses to operate within Australia.

“Similarly, given the current situation where tens of thousands of Indonesian students study in Australia, my expectation is to see a significant number of Australian students studying in Indonesia,” he said.

“Through the friendships formed during their student years, it will strengthen the bond between the two countries.”