Complementary Policies to Increase Poor People’s Access to Higher Education: the Case of West Java, Indonesia

We see a weakness in the merit-based government scholarship program, Bidik Misi, for students from poor families; most of them fail to meet the minimum academic requirements. This paper provides a policy simulation that compares two programs – private tutoring voucher (PTV) and conditional cash transfer (CCT) – to complement the Bidik Misi scholarship to boost the number of poor students eligible for the support. To this end, we offer a policy targeted at second and third year high school students at public schools. The data sources used in this study are: the Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS), the Indonesia Social and Economic Survey (SUSENAS), and some primary data. To choose the best alternative, we compare the cost effectiveness of both the programs and find that the cost per student in private tutoring voucher (PTV) program is lower than the CCT program. The PTV program is also more convincing than CCT as it could directly influence the quality of instruction. We also check the robustness of the scenario using two one-way sensitivity analyses. These analyses support our finding that the PTV program is more cost effective than the CCT program.