<![CDATA[Background: Tuition at Indonesian private universities is not capped nationally, so prospective students weigh price against visible quality signals such as accreditation and staffing. Quantitative evidence on these links is scarce. Objective: To examine how the student-to-permanent-lecturer ratio and institutional accreditation relate to the cost of the undergraduate Management program at private universities on Java. Methods: Exploratory cross-sectional study of 19 private universities (14 rated Excellent, 5 lower). The outcome is the estimated cost to graduate in eight semesters, compiled from official campus pages and education media for fee years 2022/2023 to 2026/2027. Lecturer and student counts come from 2025 open data of the national higher education database (PDDikti); accreditation from the 2025 list of accredited institutions. We used Welch, Mann–Whitney and permutation tests and OLS on log cost with HC3 errors, and compared ratios across accreditation levels for 427 private universities on Java. Results: Median cost was IDR 93.2 million at Excellent-rated universities and IDR 38.2 million at others (Mann–Whitney p < 0.001; geometric-mean ratio 3.16). With both predictors, each additional student per lecturer was associated with 2.2% lower cost (p = 0.007) and Excellent status with 2.6 times higher cost (p < 0.001). Adding size, share of doctoral lecturers and Greater Jakarta location made both estimates smaller and non-significant, as accreditation correlates strongly with the doctoral share (r = 0.78). Across 427 universities, Excellent-rated institutions had 43% lower ratios than the lowest tier after adjusting for size. Conclusion: Private tuition on Java is associated with accreditation and staffing, but the small sample and overlapping quality signals prevent separating their effects. Findings are associational and should be tested with structured fee data for all private universities.]]>
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