To tackle the low participation of students from poor households in
higher education, the Government of Indonesia (GOI) and the private
sectors introduced Bidik Misi program in 2010, which provides
opportunities for poor students to gain access to public universities.
However, despite Bidik Misi being a good incentive for poor students to
perform well at high school, most of them fail to meet the minimum
academic requirement because students from high socioeconomic status
background outperform those from poor family backgrounds, both at high
school as well as in public university entrance examination.