Autonomy by decree, sovereignty withheld: the neoliberal paradox of legal-entity universities in Indonesia

Indonesia’s legal-entity state universities, known as PTN-BH, are officially celebrated as autonomous, yet academics there report denser control than before. This article defines and explains that neoliberal paradox: autonomy expands discretion over institutional means while contracting authority over academic ends. Drawing on Robertson and Dale’s critical cultural political economy of education and Neave’s Evaluative State thesis, it analyses 47 laws, court decisions, statutes, governance rules, accountability instruments and strategic plans tracing the shift from the first legal-entity universities (PTN-BHMN) to PTN-BH. Neoliberal reform did not retreat after the Constitutional Court annulled corporatisation in 2010; it was redesigned. Autonomy is codified in financial terms, conferred as a reward for market-compatible performance, financed by shifting costs onto students, governed by boards fusing ministerial and market authority, and disciplined by mutable sub-statutory indicators. We call this settlement autonomy without sovereignty: a state-administered neoliberalism in which marketisation survives constitutional prohibition by migrating into administrative technique.