Ombudsman Accommodates High Complaints For Lecture Money For Kupang's New Undana Student Singles

NTT - Ombudsman received complaints from residents of East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) about the large cost of Single Lecture Money (UKT) to enter into new students at Nusa Cendana University (Undana) in Kupang City.

"We received complaints from parents of prospective Undana new students who basically complained that the amount of UKT costs set for their children was too large and not in accordance with the category," said Head of the Indonesian Ombudsman Representative of NTT Darius Beda Daton, Tuesday, July 18, quoted by Antara.

He explained that parents said that the UKT costs set based on the category were too high and did not match their background or abilities.

The category in question, he said, has been determined by the Minister of Education and Culture, starting from category one amounting to IDR 500 thousand to category 10 with a value above IDR 9 million.

Beda Daton said that the determination of UKT costs was solely based on the data entered and then validated by the UKT team by checking a number of things such as parental salaries, electricity accounts, and water paid for, houses, and old people's vehicles.

Thus, he said, if an error occurs in entering data, there will be a change in the category which will have an impact on the UKT value.

"The category was created based on the income of parents and the one who entered the data was a prospective student himself so that there could be an error there," he said.

Data input errors, he said, could occur because of the acceptance of new students in 2023, there were no more interviews to determine UKT as was done in the previous year.

Different Daton said, regarding the residents' complaints, his party had suggested that prospective students who felt that the determination of the UKT was not in accordance with the category could submit a UKT review letter to the Undana rector to be validated.

"Later on, there will be re-verification of the Undana UKT team so that the UKT value set could go down or also go up," he said.

He added, in 2023, the government is preparing scholarships for the Smart Indonesia Card (KIP) for lectures, including quotas for Undana as many as 460 people so that the remaining of the total 2,000 new students are transferred to UKT.