A Vast Expansion, Yet a Sorry Infrastructure: A Paradox of the Decolonization of Indonesian Education, c. 1950s

The multitude of infrastructural problems in the Indonesian educational sector which had to be dealt with during the 1950s was counterpointed by the sector’s massive expansion. The aim of this paper is to explore this paradox in the framework of Indonesian decolonization. The government policy was to greatly expand education at all levels because it believed education was a gateway to “fulfilling independence (mengisi kemerdekaan)”. This paper argues that this expansion was a strategy of decolonization by which the education legacy of the colonial past was to be delegitimized. However, severe budgetary limitations, and a lack of infrastruture and facilities forced the government to continue its dependence on the inherited colonial education facilities and on foreign aid, hence made the strategy of decolonization unrealized in this process of expansion. Abstrak Beragam permasalahan infrastruktur di sektor pendidikan yang harus ditangani oleh pemerintah pada tahun 1950an sangat berbanding terbalik dengan proses perluasan akses pendidikan pada periode tersebut. Tujuan artikel ini adalah mengkaji paradoks ini dalam konteks dekolonisasi Indonesia. Kebijakan pemerintah difokuskan pada usaha untuk memperluas akses pendidikan pada semua jenjang. Pemerintah meyakini pendidikan merupakan pintu gerbang untuk mengisi kemerdekaan. Argumen artikel ini adalah bahwa perluasan pendidikan merupakan strategi dekolonisasi, ketika warisan kolonial di bidang pendidikan terdelegitimasi. Namun, keterbatasan anggaran dan kurangnya daya dukung infrastruktur dan fasilitas pendidikan memaksa pemerintah untuk terus bergantung pada warisan pendidikan kolonial dan pada bantuan asing. Ketergantungan ini membuat strategi dekolonisasi tidak terlaksana. DOI: doi.org/10.22146/lembaran-sejarah.69968 49 A Vast Expansion, Yet a Sorry Infrastructure Vol. 17 No. 1 April 2021


Abstract
The multitude of infrastructural problems in the Indonesian educational sector which had to be dealt with during the 1950s was counterpointed by the sector's massive expansion. The aim of this paper is to explore this paradox in the framework of Indonesian decolonization. The government policy was to greatly expand education at all levels because it believed education was a gateway to "fulfilling independence (mengisi kemerdekaan)". This paper argues that this expansion was a strategy of decolonization by which the education legacy of the colonial past was to be delegitimized. However, severe budgetary limitations, and a lack of infrastruture and facilities forced the government to continue its dependence on the inherited colonial education facilities and on foreign aid, hence made the strategy of decolonization unrealized in this process of expansion.

Introduction
In the Introduction to Heirs to World Culture: Being Indonesian 1950-1965(2012, historian Jennifer Lindsay writes the following: "[T]he entire 1950-1965 period generally has been seen (by Indonesian and non-Indonesians alike) in terms of a trajectory towards that tragic end point: the economy failing; the decline of constitutional democracy; an increasingly autocratic leader; the crushing of regional autonomy; centralization of power; intellectual and cultural polarization between the Left and the Right, and the Cold War looming over all." (p. 4). 1 Lindsay continues: "To begin to understand the 1950s and early 1960s, we must attempt to look at the period in its own terms, and not in retrospect from a 1965 perspective" (p. 5). 2 In line with Lindsay's perspective, Henk Schulte Nordholt (2011) points out a contrastive dichotomy of views about Indonesia in the 1950s. The dichotomy is concerned with the Soekarno and the Soeharto periods of administration. The latter has generally characterized the former as "a road to disaster". 3 Nordholt suggests "to access this decade on its own terms and explore its particular dynamics and complexities". 4 This paper argues that the 1950s in Indonesia cannot possibly be understood in "its own terms" unless it is carefully examined as a period of continuation and change from the perspective of the destructive war period of the 1940s. In the case of education policy and practice in particular, one cannot discuss the 1950s without re-viewing the impact of the 1940s war on educational policy, system, teachers, students, and infrastructure and facilities. Most of the educational problems of the 1950s in Indonesia were a consequence of the 1940s war. While the aim of this paper is to examine the Indonesian 1950s in "its own term", it treats the 1950s as a mirror of the 1940s. The period covered in the present paper is "circa 1950s", which conveys double flexibility of a period of time which is not strictly bounded, namely "circa" and "the 1950s". This is to indicate that the 1950s do not represent a period which stands in isolation in a strict sense.
The 1950s show that the Indonesian people, who had just gained their independence, still had to continue their struggle to recover from the disastrous impact of the wars of the 1940s. One of the characteristics of Indonesian education of the 1950s was a paradox. On the one hand, the educational infrastructure and facilities were chaotic. School buildings, learning materials, books, libraries, laboratories and laboratory equipment were in chronic short supply. Notwithstanding this, in the same period there was a massive expansion of education at all levels. The aim of this paper is therefore to explore the disruptiveness of the lack of facilities and the attempt to massively expand education. It is perhaps interesting to problematize why educational expansion was able to continue despite the limited infrastructure, and how far this paradox reflected a process of decolonization. Unlike other colonial countries in Southeast Asia, Indonesia left the 1940s and came into the 1950s having suffered two wars that is, the Second World War (1942)(1943)(1944)(1945) and the war against the Dutch (1945)(1946)(1947)(1948)(1949). The wars were disastrous for educational infrastructure. During the Second World War in Indonesia, many school buildings were appropriated by the Japanese to use as military barracks and administrative offices. The Japanese also destroyed books and other school facilities left by the Dutch colonial administration. They sent European teachers to internment camps and Indonesian teachers to military training centres. 5 Many other school buildings were burnt down or simply collapsed because of other reasons such as lack of maintenance and neglect. 6 In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War (1945)(1946)(1947)(1948)(1949), the Netherlands Indies Civil Administration (NICA) and the Indonesian Republican government attempted to resume education in their respective areas of control. As a report of the NICA says, "materials of study were collected, furniture was repaired or manufactured". Yet, many school buildings remained in use by military troops or were unavailable for educational purposes. 7 The war between the two state polities caused a serious delay in the recovery of the educational sector. In the Republican controlled territories, schooling was even frequently interrupted by mobilization of the students and teachers to help defend the Republican-held areas. 8 So, Indonesia stepped into the 1950s with many problems. As the historian M.C. Ricklefs 5) The Netherlands Indies Government Department of Education. (1948) to work in strategic fields, such as economics, engineering, agriculture, and education. Put briefly, regardless of the multiple problems it was facing, Indonesia during first two decades after the Second World War recorded notable achievements in terms of education expansion. According to historian Justus van der Kroef, the outstanding characteristic of education in the early 1950s was "its continuous and spectacular expansion" as well as its "remarkable growth in the variety of schools". 16 And as an American political scientist and former foreign officer, Guy J. Pauker put it in 1968, "[t]he only achievement of the Indonesian administration since independence has been in education". 17 The process in which education expanded in a situation of limited and poor educational infrastructure in the 1950s has been largely missing from Indonesian historiography. The existing studies on Indonesian education of the 1950s have generally focused on the mission of nation-building and on the ideological contestation leading to the Communist's uprising in 1965. 18 While some historians have attempted to address the socio-cultural aspects of educational practices, 19 the complex situation of educational infrastructure during the 1950s has been missing from existing studies. The paradox of massive expansion yet infrastructural inadequacy, which was quite characteristic of Indonesia in the 1950s, has been overshadowed by the historiography of the more recent period, particularly related to the 1965 Communist insurgence and the New Order's crushing of it. As Adrian Vickers argues, the 1965 tragedy not only saw the removal of many intellectuals from the decision-making arena but also swept away all the achievements of the 1950s from the Indonesian collective memory. 20 Many studies have tended to overlook the 1950s "in its own terms".
In the following sections, this paper deals with the government 16) Justus van der Kroef.(1957) policy of education expansion and with a "behind-the-scene" illustration of improvisation, by which the government meant to overcome parlous budgets, infrastructures and facilities.

The Expansion of Education
The main aim of the government's education policy during the 1950s was two-fold. The first was to combat illiteracy. The second was to develop the willingness and initiatives of the people to participate in the many aspects of the daily life in the society, or in the government's terminology, "auto-activiteit". Its policy was concerned with formal and mass education. According to government officials, Muhammad Yamin and M. Hutasoit, the two programs represented the idea of "fulfilling independence" (mengisi kemerdekaan). While the two programs have been dealt with extensively elsewhere, 21 this section focuses on the results of the schooling expansion policy. In particular, it explores the increasing student population.
The number of students who enrolled in educational institutions at different levels grew sharply in the successive years of the 1950s. Tables 1, 2 and 3 respectively provide a sketch of the growth of schools, pupils and teachers.  Kroef [1957]) deal with primary, secondary and tertiary education. The three tables largely correspond in terms of the years of coverage. While they are from different sources, the correspondence in the covered years provides us with reliable statistics because it does not differ significantly in the years covered. Thus, we can conclude that these statistics have some degree of accuracy. Table 1 covers the war years of the 1940s. It shows that the number of primary schools was reduced to less than a quarter by the end of the war years 21) Agus Suwignyo. "Mass Education", op.cit., 154-167; see also Sebastiaan Broere. (2020). "Auto-activity: Decolonization and the Politics of Knowledge Early Postwar Indonesia, ca 1920-1955 of the 1940s. The war decade also saw a significant decline in the number of primary school teachers although this then rebounded at the end of the 1940s; however, the anomaly in the numbers of teachers during the 1940s requires further examination. 22 Table 1 also shows a sharp increase in the number of primary school pupils between 1940 and 1950 but experienced a significant decline in 1947.
Tables 2 and 3 provide a more detailed picture of the education situation based on the level of educational institution. Of particular interest here is the number of secondary and higher education institutions. In Table  3 we see that the number of secondary schools increased by ten fold between 1940 and 1955 whereas for higher education it was nearly five fold. We also see in the table the marked increase in the numbers of students and teachers of both secondary and higher education institutions during the same period. While the data in 1940 might reflect colonial education policy, the figures in 1951 and 1955 can provide us with a snapshot of Indonesian educational achievement in the first five years following the transfer of sovereignity from the Netherlands to Indonesia. There were sharp increases in both the number of educational institutions, teachers and students between 1951 and 1955. The number of primary schools increased by 19.5%, secondary schools by 58% and higher education institutions by 35%. The number of primary school students 22) Agus Suwignyo. "School Teachers and Soft Decolonization of Dutch-Indonesian Relations, 1945-1949, Itinerario, forthcoming. of 1955 was 26.9% more than that in 1951; the secondary school students increased by 177.9%; and for university-level students 255.3%. Likewise, the number of primary school teachers in 1955 increased by 25.4% from 1951; secondary school teachers by 20%; and university/higher education by 166.5%. These figures show a tremendous expansion of educational access in the decade. According to government officials, rapid population growth was responsible for the massive expansion of education which had to be carefully taken into account in planning for future educational expansion. In 1947, the Director of Education and Religious Affairs of the NICA government, R.W. van Diffelen, said that the number of school-goers had doubled throughout the war years. The number of students increased from 3 million in 1942 to 6 million in 1947. In densely populated areas like Central Java, there was one school for about every 30 000 inhabitants. This proportion had to be changed to one school for every 1500 inhabitants, according to Van Diffelen. 23 Government officials of independent Indonesia continued to echo this same message. In 1954, the Director General of Education of the Indonesian Department of National Education and Culture, M. Hutasoit, said that Indonesia was facing a 15% of growth rate for school-age children. The assumption was based on a 1.5% growth in the Indonesian population, which was about 70 million people in 1951. 24 Indeed, the Indonesian population grew significantly from 77.2 million people in 1950 to 85.4 million in 1955 to 97 million in 1961. 25 The Minister of Education and Culture, Muhammad Yamin, said that Indonesia would need 50 865 primary schools for the six-year period of 1955-1960, or an increase of about 4309 annually. This projection was based on an average of 250 pupils per school, with the number of schoolage children (7 years and above) who would join the compulsory education program amounting to 12 795 200. 26

The Expansion of Higher Education
The policy of expanding the number of places available was also made for the higher education sector. The number of higher education institutions grew from four in 1950 to 355 in 1964, whereas the number of students increased from 6500 to 278 000 over the same span of time. 27  While Gadjah Mada University, the University of Indonesia, National University, State College of Islamic Religion and Indonesian Islamic University were together the pioneers of higher education of independent Indonesia, Gadjah Mada University and the University of Indonesia were the two leading institutions. As William K. Cummings and Salman Kasenda argue, Gadjah Mada University and the University of Indonesia reflected the spirit of newly independent Indonesia because they "managed to shed most of the vestiges of the colonial heritage excepting some old buildings and facilities". 30 To some extent, these two universities shared similar characteristics. They both stressed nationalism, the preference for indigenous staff and staff development, the priority of expansion, and a concern programs were in harmony with government's expectations. 31 The student numbers of the two universities increased significantly and comprised most of the Indonesian students in the first two decades of independence (see Table 4).
The State College of Islamic Religion (Institut Agama Islam Negara-IAIN) was founded in Yogyakarta in 1946 and began full operation with sixty-seven students in 1951. This institute continued to expand both in student numbers and in the number of colleges. The number of the IAIN also increased from only one in 1951 to thirteen in 1970, which ran a total of eitth colleges under the auspices of 596 full-time and 2210 part-time instructors. 32 Meanwhile, the Indonesian Islamic University (Universitas Islam Indonesia-UII) remained to operate as a private university. Its student body developed from 359 in 1953 to over 3,600 in 1969. 33 28) Agus Suwignyo. (2017) Last but not least, the National University, which was established by some Indonesian nationalists Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana and Bahder Djohan in October 1949, 34 grew very slowly because of lack of funds to build adequate infrastructures and facilities of its own, and to hire staffs. While its student body during the first two decades of operation was unknown, the National University awarded as modest as 786 bachelor (sarjana muda) and 170 bachelor-plus (sarjana) degrees between1950 and 1970. 35 Looking back in the time, Gadjah Mada University and the University of Indonesia were founded during the war emergency situation of the 1940s. The war had disrupted the establishment of the two universities. Consequently, their colleges were located in different geographical localities. Gadjah Mada University, which was mainly based in Yogyakarta, had its 34) Koentjaraningrat and Harsja W. Bachtiar. (1975). "Higher Education in the Social Sciences in Indonesia", in Koentjaraningrat (ed  colleges spread in Klaten, Surabaya, Magelang, Purwokerto, Semarang 36 and later also supervising the foundation of the colleges in Padang and Medan. 37 The University of Indonesia, which was based in Jakarta, had its colleges spread in Bogor, Bandung, Surabaya and Makassar. 38 When the wars ended and Indonesia re-gained its independence in 1950, the government's plan was initially to establish several state universities and to make them national landmarks of independence. The plan was to raise and develop Purnawarman University in Jakarta (as a replacement to the University of Indonesia), Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Airlangga University in Surabaya, Adityawarman University in Medan, and Hasanuddin University in Makassar. These universities would be made icons of nation building, by which the ideas of independence were to be developed and implemented through sciences. 39 This plan however, was only partially realized.
What happened in the 1950s, instead, was that the "branches" of Gadjah Mada University and of the University of Indonesia were either re-located to the city of their mother institutions respectively in order to form an integrated campus compound, or transformed into separate, autonomous universities. This policy was made because geographically-spread colleges created great difficulties in terms of coordination and very costly management. 40 So, the increase in the number of state-run universities during the 1950s was mainly due to the transformation of former colleges into autonomous universities. The Indonesian government's top priority of the 1950s was to develop primary and secondary education. In terms of higher education, the government of the 1950s relied much on the expansion of private institutions, which had existed in different localities throughout Indonesia by the mid-1950s (see Table 5). 41 Only at the start of the 1960s did the government decide to establish at least one public university in each of the 26 provinces throughout the country.

Budget, Infrastructure and Facilities
The educational official, M. Hutasoit, cited above was aware of the serious problems facing the execution of the compulsory education program. In his view, the basic problem was related to further education for young Indonesians, especially at the secondary level. As the number of entrants to the primary school significantly increased, its graduates were expected to rise. However, the capacity of secondary schools was limited. 43 According to the Information Department of the Education Ministry, "the number of secondary school[s] is simply too small to admit" the number of graduates of primary schools. 44 In July 1952, there were 26 073 primary schools and 1707 junior secondary schools of all types. The capacity of the primary schools was 5 946 802 places whereas that of the secondary schools 43) Hutasoit,Compulsory Education in Indonesia,op.cit.,) "Nasib Anak-Anak Tamatan S.R.", Arsip Muhammad Yamin No. 277 (ANRI). was 233 633 places. 45 Hence, the proportion in the early 1950s was fifteen primary schools per secondary school. Supposing fifteen primary schools were to graduate twenty graduates a year, then there would be 300 children who would need access to secondary schools. But, based on the aforementioned calculation of proportion, there is only one secondary schools for these 15 primary schools. It was certainly not possible for one secondary school to accommodate the 300 new students in one intake. If the intake capacity of one secondary school was 60 students per year, then about 80% of the primary school graduates could not enrol to secondary education. Expanding the number of secondary schools was an urgent need. The government however, faced serious budgetary restraints. In , 1951, the budget allocated for the mass, non-formal education program was significantly increased from 50 million rupiah, to 130 million, to 160 million for those successive years. 46 For regular, formal primary education the government allocated Rp58 355 200 and Rp53 535 500 in 1952 and 1953 respectively. The allocation for general education schools was 5.4% out of the total educational budget in 1952 and 6.9% in 1953. By contrast, the educational expenditure came to a total of Rp912,489,300 and Rp752,032,100 respectively. 47 So there was a huge shortfall in the financing of primary and secondary education in the early 1950s.
Although the government had managed to share the education cost by combining monies from the Ministries of Information, of Religion, and of Education, Instruction and Culture 48 and from the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 49 there was still a budget shortfall. Consequently, it had a tremendous impact on the overall plans for education development. It forced the government to scrutinize education programs in order to allocate priorities. As mentioned earlier, the government prioritized primary and secondary education and with a slower development of higher education in public education policy. The government aimed to bolster the compulsory education program in order to combat the problem of illiteracy. As Hutasoit put it, "stabilization [of the society] will only be reached when all citizens have been given the opportunity of receiving primary schooling". 50 The prioritization of budgets caused some sectors or aspects of education to attract less funning. As indicated earlier, the government made a priority in the budget for primary and secondary schools. But it did not mean that all sectors in primary and secondary education received the amount of funds necessary to achieve improvements. For the first five years after the transfer of sovereignty, 1950-1955, the government concentrated on the construction of buildings, especially of secondary schools, to meet a chronic shortage. Consequently, the needs for study materials, books and other facilities were left unmet. It was not until the second half of the 1950s that the study materials, books and other facilities could be supplied, thanks to the aid provided by foreign governments. The following section takes a closer look at how the problems of limited educational infrastructures and facilities of the 1950s were tackled and handled.

Education Buildings
Remedying the dearth of school buildings became one the government's priorities. As discussed previously, the serious lack of secondary educational institutions hindered the implementation of the compulsory education program. The existing number of secondary schools were simply too few to be able to accommodate the number of primary school graduates. A major problem faced by the secondary education sector was the limited number of places in the available school institutions, stemming from a shortage of school buildings as compared to the capacity of the existing school institutions.
The number of the buildings of secondary schools was fewer than the existing number of the secondary school institutions. Table 6 shows that the number of the buildings for secondary schools was 1162 fewer than the number of secondary school institutions. The secondary school institutions included two major levels, namely junior and senior secondary education. The senior secondary education consisted of thirteen different types. Some were responsible for running a practice school, i.e. a school where students of the teacher training schools did an internship for learning to teach a real class. The Minister of Education and Culture, Muhammad Yamin, admitted in 1954 that more than 80% of the existing secondary schools did not have buildings of their own. They had to share buildings with other schools or to rent ones from private owners. 51 Yamin explains that some of the existing school buildings, which Indonesia had inherited from the colonial past, were used by other government departments, especially by the military and police. Table 7 shows there were in total 154 school buildings in different localities being used for purposes other than education. By the time Yamin made his report, 51) Muhammad Yamin. Usaha-Usaha Pendidikan, Pengadjaran dan Kebudajaan, op.cit., p. 16. the Indonesian Army had returned one building in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan to the Department of Education. The building was later made an engineering secondary school (Sekolah Teknik, ST). The Jakarta chapter of the Indonesian Army also returned two buildings it had occupied, located respectively in Jalan Budi Utomo and in Jalan Pinangsia. 52 There was also a shortage of campus buildings and the houses for students and faculty members. A case in point being Gadjah Mada University. The operation of Gadjah Mada University in the first ten years of its existence for example, was made possible by the generosity of the Sultan of Yogyakarta, who lent the University several compounds of his palace to be used as classrooms and administration offices. The Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmacy, the Faculty of Agriculture and the Faculty of Veterinary Science operated in the Ngasem compound of the palace; the Faculty of Law, the Faculty of Economics and the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences in the Pagelaran compound; and the Faculty of Literature, Pedagogy and Philosophy in the Wijilan compound. 53 Classrooms were very modest. In some cases, a large room had to be split into two smaller parts by a wooden partition. So thin was the partition that the voice of a professor in one room passed through and was heard by students in the adjoining room. Administrative offices were also very modest. For example, the administration of the Faculty of Economics occupied a room measuring 12x6 meters, which had to be used by the dean, the administrative secretaries, the janitors, and all other supporting divisions. The Faculty of Veterinary Science used two of the palace rooms, respectively 5.25x4.75 meters and 4.75x4 meters in size. The rooms functioned as a classroom, an office and a reading corner. 54 All in all, the government's immediate solution to the scarcity of education buildings was to arrange the schedules so that one building could be used by different school institutions. This policy was especially meant for primary and secondary schools. But it could only work when two or more school institutions were located in the same geographical area. Another strategy to overcome the lack of school buildings was to rely on a shared budget. The costs were shared mostly between private or local initiatives and the central government. In 1954, for example, the people of the subdistrict Tarusan in West Sumatra collected money for constructing a Junior Secondary School building in their area. The construction committee requested financial support from the government. 55 A similar initiative was also taken by the people of the Regency of Bengkalis. In 1957 they constructed 52) Muhammad Yamin. Djawaban Pemerintah,op.cit.,p. 49 a building for a senior secondary school with a large amount of financial support from the government. 56 Eventually the government made the shared budget scheme an official policy. The Ministry of Education and Culture issued a call for public participation. Through Letter No. 29213/Kb signed by the Minister on 10 July 1954, the Indonesian State formally asked for the help of the private sector to provide funds for the building of the state-run schools. The government promised that it would pay back to the private sector the expenses incurred for the construction. According to Yamin, the government's call received widespread, positive responses. 57 But except for the two cases stated previously (Tarusan and Bengkalis), no other cases of a public responses were identified in the research for this paper.
The government's next plan was to expand the construction of new buildings for education. Again according to Yamin, by 1954 the government had successfully constructed 1700 new buildings for junior and senior high schools. Some of the buildings were made of bamboo and wood. They consumed a total of 25 million rupiah. For the 1955 fiscal year, the budgetary allocation for education buildings slightly increased. The government's plan was to allocate 18.5 million rupiah for building university campuses, respectively 4.7 million for constructing the building of senior and junior higher schools, and 1.8 million for constructing buildings for educational emergency purposes. The latter means that the buildings could be used by schools of different levels. 58

University Student Dormitories and Faculty Housing
In the case of higher education, the housing issue of the 1950s needs to be addressed because it was a critical need for staff and students to be proximate to and interact on campus. A sample case of the housing issue concerns Gadjah Mada University. Because most students of Gadjah Mada University originated from many different places throughout Indonesia, they had to stay in a rented room during their study time in Yogyakarta. But houses for rent were scarce. In March 1950, the University opened student dormitories in the areas of Notoprajan, Langenharjan Tengah and Panembahan in Yogyakarta. The capacity of the dormitories was sixty-eight people. In October 1952, the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmacy also opened two dormitories in the areas of Yudonegaran, Polowijan, and Kadipaten with a total capacity of sixty-nine students and university staffs. There was another student house in the Terban area of Yogyakarta, which housed twenty-seven students 56) "Pembangunan Sekolah Guru Bengkalis", Arsip Kabinet Presiden No. 1221 (ANRI). 57) Muhammad Yamin. Djawaban Pemerintah, op.cit., p. 48 58) Ibid., p. 50 and eight staff. 59 As Thomas said, the Indonesian higher education policy for the two decades of the 1950s and 1960s focused mainly on expanding academic structure and diversifying curricula, attracting and training staff members, providing adequate classrooms, laboratories, and housing for staff members, and supplying instructional materials, especially books and scholarly journals. 60 With a budget of 15 million rupiah, that President Soekarno granted on 30 December 1950, 61 Gadjah Mada University was able to finalize, in 1953, the construction of a two-storey administrative building. The University also received grants to build two student houses (one of them located in the Baciro area of Yogyakarta), three resident houses for staff members, and the laboratory buildings for the Faculties of Agriculture and Forestry and of Veterinary Science. In 1954 construction was planned to be underway for more than thirty houses for University staff members. 62 Notwithstanding this fact, University houses remained a luxury facility for most of the staff members. According to the University presidential annual report of 1966, only about 29 per cent (188 people) of the 657 teaching staff members and only 0.6 per cent (16 people) of the 2543 non-teaching staff members of Gadjah Mada University could enjoy the University's housing facility. 63

Learning Materials
The availability of study materials was another serious issue. This section explores the issue of the procurement of adequate supplies of schoolbooks and study materials by education authorities. Looking back to the period of the 1940s, we see the complication of the learning materials somehow had its roots in the political regime change. According to R. Murray Thomas, education in Indonesia in the aftermath of the Second World War resumed a Western, not Japanese, way of schooling. 64 However, the war between the Netherlands and Indonesia caused different political trajectories. As Ben Anderson argues, "during the four years of Revolution (1945Revolution ( -1949, there were really two states functioning in Indonesia, that of the infant Republic and that of the returning Netherlands-Indies". 65 This created a dualist system of education which made the provision of study materials even more complicated.
A provisional list of books, maps, wall posters and all kinds of teaching aids, including laboratory equipment and sport facilities, which was issued by the Department of Education Commission for Study Materials in Jakarta in December 1947, provides us with a snapshot of the availability of learning materials. Printed materials for eighteen subjects were available in Indonesian and Dutch. The materials of reading, writing, arithmetic, biology, hygiene, singing, and physical exercise were available in the Javanese, Maduranese, and Sundanese languages. There were textbooks in English too. A written request could be submitted by a school to the educational authorities for the study materials they needed. The lists were meant for public and subsidized schools all over Indonesia. 66 On 6 October 1949, the chairman of the Commission for Study Materials said that any study materials remaining from the pre-war period should not be used in the post-war, reformed curricula. New books, journals and reading materials had to be published anew so as to suit the new curricula. 67 A government report claimed that the Department of Education had published 4000 copies of children's monthly magazines, 15 000 copies of Horizon magazine, 20 000 copies of teachers' handbooks, 25 000 copies of teachers' references, and 25 000 copies of a parents' guidebook. 68 It is not possible to corroborate these figures against any other sources.
The Commission also received from different authors manuscripts to be published. But they had to reject most of them because their contents did not conform with the teaching method in the post-war educational system. According to the Commission, every region had the autonomy to choose the educational method which was most suitable with the social, economic or geographical conditions of their respective region. 69 In 1954, the Minister of Education and Culture admitted the complexity in providing school books. He said for the thirteen types of schools, from primary to secondary levels, his office had to print some 600 book titles. They were new manuscripts, which had gone through thorough reviews to ensure they conformed with the postwar curriculum. As a result, millions of exemplars of books had to be printed. 70 477-496, especially p. 481. 66) Departemen Pendidikan, Keboedajaan dan Pengetahoean. (1948). Another way of obtaining the study materials was by printing them abroad. The Commission for Study Materials ordered books from Australia. However, they found the result disappointing. This was because the Australian printing house sent to Jakarta 10 000 copies of student books and 100 000 copies of teacher's manuals, which was the reverse of what was needed that is,100 000 copies of student books and 10 000 copies of teacher's manuals. 71 In order to bridge the gap, the Commission had to re-order the printing of the materials in Jakarta. However, none of the existing printing houses in Jakarta could do the job because they did not have enough paper meaning the Commission could only get a very limited number of the materials printed. 72 Fourthly, the government also employed creative strategies in disseminating the study materials especially in order to tackle the problem of different geographical localities and consequent delayed distribution. One of the strategies was by setting up a series of programmes broadcast by Radio Batavia. This Radio had a regular program called "Lezingen", lecture, in which different pedagogists and teachers read a certain lesson. 73 The publication of Madjallah Kita (previously titled Pedoman Goeroe) and Madjallah Oentoek Para Pendidik di Indonesia was another creative strategy. These two teachers' journals contained various teaching materials which were especially written for (and by) teachers. For example, some materials on history, mathematics, home economics and zoology were published with full illustrations and examples. It is clear that these teachers' journals were meant as teaching resources for teachers. 74

Public and University Libraries
As one of the components of educational facilities, public and university libraries deserve attention. While the reading materials for formal education were not always available because of the many factors explained earlier, the growth of public and university libraries during the 1950s was particularly notable thanks to aid from the international community. In 1953, the government issued a list of foreign libraries and publishers with whom Indonesia had active cooperation for the acquisition of books and printed materials (see Table 8). The books and printed materials were kept in stateowned libraries and in university libraries. 75 In terms of public and university libraries, Yogyakarta benefited from the fact that it was the Indonesian capital from 1946 to 1950. Many libraries were established in this city with the acquisition of thousands of books and reading materials, especially periodicals, magazines and newspapers. The State Library, which was relocated from Jalan Tugu 66 to Jalan Malioboro 85 on 17 March 1952, acquired some 60 000 exemplars of books and printed materials. Gadjah Mada University Library owned 29 000 books; Sono Budojo Library 14 000 books; and the Islamic Library 15 500 books. Meanwhile, the Library of the State Islamic Higher Learning Institution (Perguruan Tinggi Agama Islam Negeri-PTAIN) collected 13 000 books; the Pancasila Library 1100 books and the Library of the Press and Public Opinion Institute 250

Laboratories
On being establishment, Indonesian universities inherited laboratory equipment and instruments from the colonial time. Some of the equipment and instruments had been relocated from Jakarta and Bandung by the Indonesian nationalists, who feared that the Netherlands Indies Civil Administration would prevent them from using it. One of the cases concerned the laboratory of the Pasteur Institute in Bandung, which would become a laboratory of the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmacy of Gadjah Mada University. Following the seizing of Jakarta and Bandung by the British and the Dutch troops in October 1945, a senior staff of the Bandung's Pasteur Institute, R. Soekarnen, took the initiative to relocate some of the most important laboratory equipment and instruments from the Pasteur Institute. He packed the equipment and instruments and moved them to the Central Java town of Klaten. With the help of a friend, Soekarnen got an access to the laboratory facilities of the Verenigde Klatensche Cultuur Maatschappij (Klaten Association of the Agriculture Company-VKCM). He integrated the equipment and instruments he had brought from Bandung to the VKCM facilities and reestablished the Pasteur Institute in Klaten. 79 However of drugs and materials before it could carry out any tests and experiments. The president of Gadjah Mada University, Sardjito, who worked as a medical doctor at the Klaten Pasteur Institute during the Indonesian war against the Dutch, recalled the Institute's lack of bacteria-making gelatine (agar-agar), peptone, non-sodium salt and glycerine. These were essential components to produce vaccines to protect against pests, cholera, typhus, dysentery and smallpox. Sardjito knew that the peptone could be created by blending pig colons with Hexachloroethane (HCe). He also found out that agar-agar could be made from seaweed. He could easily get the pigs colons, probably from the Republican town of Purworejo, which is some 90 km west of Klaten. However, it was difficult for him to get the seaweed. Sardjito initially aimed to order the seaweed from Surabaya, which had seaweed markets with the seaweed coming from nearby beaches. But Surabaya was a contested battle field during the Revolutionary war which made it impossible to do business there. Then Sardjito ordered the material from Tuban, a coastal town located some 100 km northwest of Surabaya. The transporting of the seaweed from Tuban to Klaten (a distance of some 235 km ) was unsuccessful. The route from Tuban to Klaten was almost completely under Dutch control, in which several places were contested. Eventually, Sardjito decided to re-cycle the agar-agar he had already used by drying it under the sun. He re-used the dried agar-agar to continue the production of vaccines. 80 Sardjito said that, despite limited equipment and materials, by 1947 the Pasteur Institute in Klaten had produced some 1750 litres of the pest vaccine and 3000 litres of cholera, typhus and dysentery vaccines. During its production, 34 of 124 kg of agar-agar used was recycled agar-agar. 81 The lack of laboratory facilities continued to be a problem especially for the full operation of the science departments of Gadjah Mada University. In 1955, the University managed to develop laboratories for agriculture and veterinary sciences. 82 Yet, there were no instruments, literature and experts. In 1956, the initiative to build a laboratory of embryology had to be turned down because there was no equipment. The existing laboratories continued to operate for limited teaching purposes only, such as making anatomic specimen and doing microcosmic and macrocosmic analyses. 83 As a matter of fact, another problem faced by laboratories was poor maintenance. Roger Bancroft, coordinator of the American educationists who was commissioned to work in Bandung in 1957, was surprised by the fact that 80) Ibid., pp. 4-5. 81) Ibid., p. 9. 82) Sardjito. (1955). Laporan Tahunan  the long standing Science Faculty in Bandung hardly had any "small dissecting tools" in its wonderful laboratory building. Meanwhile, Bancroft's colleagues who were deployed to Malang that is, Herbert Bailey and Harold Richardson, noted the tragic condition of the Science Department of the Malang Institute of Teachers' Training. They found some 200 crates of Science equipment remained unused and abandoned in a warehouse of the University. "Box after box of microscopes, micrometres, ammeters, voltmeters and the like, have come to light," thus Bailey and Richardson said. They also found glassware of all sizes and shapes which they said were "enough for undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral science classes for years". They estimated all of the equipment was worth US$ 100,000. 84 All of them remained unused and abandoned.

Conclusion
The expansion of education during the 1950s was unbalanced given the multitude of infrastructural problems the education sector was facing. The government priority was to develop primary and secondary education in the first half of the 1950s. The number of schools and student enrolments increased steeply for the first five years of the 1950s. This shows the rapid pace of expansion in the provision of student places in public education. Meanwhile, higher education began to develop strongly in the second half of the 1950s, greatly assisted by the foreign aid the Indonesian government received. The massive expansion of schooling at all levels shaped a new characteristic of the sociological landscape of Indonesian education. Unlike in the colonial time when Indonesians' access to public education was limited and highly stratified, in the 1950s all Indonesians could enrol in school, either through the regular system of schooling or through the non-formal, mass education programs. The people also had greater access to higher education, which had become increasingly available by the end of the 1950s. Notwithstanding these achievements, the expansion was uneven in its execution because of the limited budget. This was particularly seen in terms of infrastructure and facilities development. While the educational budget of the government was limited, the largest proportion of the available budget had to be allocated for the construction of school buildings. This was because of an insufficient number of school buildings compared to the number of existing school institutions. In addition, books and learning materials were very limited. And while the idea was to have all the books and learning materials designed anew so to support the new education curriculum of independent Indonesia, the troubles that appeared in the process forced this to be put to one side. Higher education developed very well, but the dearth of facilities 84) Roger Bancroft to John Slocum, 30 November 1958, p. 4, Grant No. 05800283, Improvement of Instruction and Curriculum (Ford Foundation Archives Department, NYC). was by no means easy to solve. Not only were campus buildings limited in number, there were also hardly any laboratories to support university academic operations. The scarcity of housing for students and staff members was yet another issue in university daily life of the 1950s. The availability of public and university libraries with their growing collections was perhaps the only exception amid the multitude of infrastructural problems of education during the 1950s.
The government policy to massively increase the availability of education at all levels reflected the idea of "fulfilling independence" (mengisi kemerdekaan). The massive expansion was a strategy of decolonization by which the legacy of colonial education was to be delegitimized. However, the limited educational budget, and funding for infrastruture and facilities forced the government to continue to depend on colonial-era education facilities and on foreign aid. The massive expansion of education on one hand and, on the other hand, the multitude of problems faced in providing sufficient educational infrastructures and facilities paradoxically worked against each other in the Indonesia of the 1950s. While visionary in its concept, the decolonization of Indonesian education proved to be ambivalent in its execution.
This impact of this paradox in educational development of the 1950s was long-term. The poor educational infrastructure during the 1950s could not support the expansion needed over the long term. When the expansion policy changed because of the deep economic downturn in the early 1960s, educational infrastructure was no longer on the priority list of emergency problems that the government had to resolve. It was for the next political regime in another decade to begin dealing with educational infrastructure once more, by which time the political constellation was very different.