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For all their shortcomings, the recent senior-high national exams succeeded in reducing cheating — a feat that cannot be claimed by universities, as they look to replace their own entrance exams with national ones.

With the right amount of money, any student can pay his way into a place in his desired field of study at any of the top state universities, said Ferry (not his real name), a self-proclaimed professional cheat.

Ferry is one of countless “exam jockeys,” stand-ins hired by students to feed them answers during university entrance exams.

“Being a jockey pays well, and the exams are a piece of cake for me now,” he said.

Ferry, himself a graduate of one of the country’s more prestigious universities, has for years helped aspiring high-school graduates pass entrance exams. Working with a “coordinator,” he applies for entrance exams for associate degree courses at various universities across Bandung, where he lives.

On the day of the exam, the coordinator ensures Ferry is seated in the same row as the “clients,” who then copy from his test answer sheet.

“Monitoring is weak,” Ferry said. “The clients can see my answer sheet right away.”

He claims he can make Rp 1 million ($110) per client, with up to five or six clients per test.

“Jockeying” for entrance exams for bachelor degree programs is far more complex and requires a concerted effort, Ferry said. In such cases, he works in a team of 15, and the client’s fee increases accordingly — up to Rp 30 million.

“We start by switching the exam paper,” he said.

On exam day, he gives the client a fake question sheet to take into the exam hall. Once the real question sheets have been handed out, the client switches it with the fake one and takes the real one to the bathroom, where Ferry waits. He then takes the sheet to “base camp,” where the coordinator and the other jockeys are.

“We split up the questions so we can work on them faster,” Ferry said. “We finish in 15 to 30 minutes.”

The next part, getting the answers to the student, is the tricky bit.

“Before they go into the exam hall, we instruct them to bring in two mobile phones,” Ferry said. “They’ll hand one over to the monitors, but keep the other hidden.”

Once the “base camp” has finished answering the test questions, the coordinator phones the client.

“We usually repeat it twice, just to make sure they get it,” Ferry said.

He said a student could still flunk despite using jockeys because the answer sheets are read by optical character recognition, and thus have to be marked with the correct type of pencil. “We don’t give refunds for such cases,” Ferry said.

The rampant use of “jockeys” in university entrance exams is one reason educators are seeking to phase out these tests and replace them with national ones.

Haris Supratno, president of Surabaya State University, said the practice of cheating would always be around.

“We’re trying to keep pace in our own ways,” including increased monitoring and randomizing the question sheets up to eight times, he said.

Suparman, chairman of the Indonesian Independent Teachers Association, said cheating would continue to thrive.

“It’ll always be there,” he said. “People will just come up with new ways to do it.”