Engineering by another name: terminology planning, policy discourse, and the teknik–rekayasa debate in Indonesian higher education

This article examines the preference for rekayasa alongside teknik in Indonesian higher-education programme nomenclature following Directorate General of Higher Education Decree No. 96/B/KPT/2025. It asks how the decree problematises nomenclature, how early public discourse recontextualised the policy, and what the contestation reveals about terminology planning and institutional identity. The study combines qualitative document analysis with critical policy discourse analysis of three policy documents and an event-centred corpus of 11 public texts published from 15 to 20 May 2026. It integrates terminology planning, Fairclough's model, Bacchi's problem-representation questions, and framing analysis. The decree establishes a dual nomenclature: rekayasa is foregrounded in many programme labels, while teknik remains formally permitted. Early headlines transformed this conditional arrangement into a replacement narrative; ministerial and university responses subsequently emphasised coexistence, optionality, institutional continuity, and substantive quality. Lexicographically, rekayasa denotes applying scientific principles to design, construction, and operation, whereas teknik has a wider semantic range encompassing method, skill, and technical knowledge. However, teknik is deeply institutionalised, and the evidence does not support treating rekayasa as an abrupt lexical invention. Terminology standardisation therefore depends not on semantic precision alone, but on phased institutional uptake, historical legitimacy, and anticipatory policy communication.