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Plans to phase out university entrance examinations and instead use the results of senior high school national examinations have been thrown into doubt in the wake of the cheating scandal that has highlighted the depth of dishonesty in the education system.

University lecturers were involved in supervising this year’s examination process as part of efforts to establish a single admission test for state universities within three years but when contacted by the Jakarta Globe on Monday, senior representatives said they were far from impressed.

“We have to discuss the issue first before we reach a conclusion, but personally, I don’t think that the national examination is credible,” said Haris Supratno, the chairman of the state university entrance test committee.

Haris, president of Surabaya State University, said his views were shared by a number of his colleagues from leading universities throughout Indonesia.

The current cheating scandal, involving 5,000 students from at least 18 senior high schools, is believed to be the tip of the iceberg, with the nation’s oldest and largest teachers’ association recently complaining that members were often encouraged to collude with students and cheat during national examinations due to pressure placed on them by local administrations.

Haris said high schools should conduct a thorough evaluation of the way they conducted their examinations if the results were ever to be used to gain a university position.

“If schools want their students’ national examination results to be recognized as a single consideration to enter state universities, please evaluate yourselves, improve your test credibility,” he said.

The same opinion is shared by Idrus Paturusi, president of Makassar’s Hasanuddin University. He said national examination control was very important for the students, because state universities expected certain standards from high school graduates if their national exam results were going to be used as a screening entrance to university.

“But in light of the cheating case, I don’t think I can say that they have met the required standards. They didn’t conduct themselves honestly.”

The state university entrance examinations will be held in July when an estimated 400,000 students will fight it out for 92,000 seats.