Credit, Evidence, and Experiential Learning: Assessing Indonesia’s Merdeka Belajar-Kampus Merdeka Policy

Abstract

The Merdeka Belajar-Kampus Merdeka policy permits Indonesian undergraduates to earn a substantial portion of their degree outside their study programme, but rapid implementation has outrun the design questions on which the validity of the resulting qualification depends. This study aims to examine how the regulatory framework constructs recognition of externally obtained learning, to identify the conditions research establishes as necessary for experiential learning to produce creditable outcomes, and to formulate reconstruction that secures the policy’s benefits while protecting qualification validity. The research combines qualitative document analysis with normative examination of higher education regulation, analysing the Higher Education Law, national higher education standards, and the quality assurance regulation, tested against scholarship on workplace affordances, situated learning, experiential education, and comparative credit frameworks. The findings show that the framework construes credit in terms of learning outcomes while implementation has substituted activity equivalence, converting duration into credit without verifying learning; that placement quality depends on affordances the regulatory framework does not address, producing wide variation concealed by uniform credit awards; that reflective writing as sole assessment measures articulacy rather than the capabilities claimed; and that access to good placements currently tracks students’ pre-existing social capital. The article recommends learning agreements specifying outcomes and evidence, regulation of placement affordance rather than duration, assessment combining work artefacts with structured host judgement and oral examination, curricular restructuring around a disciplinary core, and development of an institutional intermediary function.