Is the coefficient practice being revived at YÖK?

Last month YÖK annulled the circular, a relic of the 28 February days, concerning the 'national committees' that reduced universities to fascistic militaristic institutions. This was an act befitting YÖK President Prof. Dr. Gökhan Çetinsaya, whom we know for his competence and intellectual command in international relations and political science.

Truly, the YÖK administration, with its approach to academic life entirely removed from freedoms and ideological fixations, has been left with only a name. In answer to the demands for abolishing YÖK, there is actually not much left waiting to be abolished, yet I suppose that the removal of that name as well would serve as a separate psychological reinforcement.

But last week a strange decision issued from YÖK. The decision closes the way for Faculty of Science and Letters students to become teachers by obtaining teacher training. Thus, graduates of Faculties of Science and Letters will no longer be able to become teachers in any way. So what will they become? Of course YÖK has no suggestion or guidance on this. Unfortunately there is no very wide field of employment before students of science and letters. Students who graduated from there could be appointed as teachers at schools affiliated with the Ministry of National Education or at private schools by obtaining teacher training. For the rest, each is immensely limited in their own field, and many can find ways of employment outside their field by their own means. Yet their curricula envisage that they study the science of the fields they aspire to teach, with its theory, its history and its research methods. That is, frankly, they have more than enough to teach their fields, and lack nothing. The only thing deemed lacking is their teacher training, but when they are prevented from obtaining that too, their path to teaching is closed.

As expected, the decision has had a complete shock effect among students of Faculties of Science and Letters, while it has created a festive mood among students of faculties of education. That people can rejoice so much at an advantage arising from someone else's victimization is, frankly, itself food for thought. With a criterion that looks, in short, to a single decree, someone's right is defined; while a right is taken from one, others are granted the right to compete in a less competitive environment. This part of the matter only reveals a demoralizing reality, namely that the different elements of society do not appear to be in a very organic integration. But that is a separate subject.

Without prolonging the matter further, let us say it openly. YÖK's decision removing the possibility of teacher training from Faculties of Science and Letters is no different from the coefficient practice that was buried in history together with 28 February in more recent times.

In that practice too, the essence was to cause serious victimization by unnecessarily and meaninglessly limiting people's options, while each field of science also received its share of that victimization. Meanwhile, the shallowing and homogenization of education was an added bonus.

By making transitions between fields impossible, the coefficient practice prevented the sciences from interacting with one another, and left the fields of science and profession to the horizon of people destined to open their eyes entirely in that profession and close them without seeing any world other than that profession.

The direct result of Faculty of Science and Letters graduates being unable to become teachers will be to cut student demand for those departments. When demand declines, the scores of these departments will drop, and the quality of science in them will inevitably drop too, because let us now see this: when high-scoring students do not go to fields where employment opportunities are limited, it is not possible for that field to reproduce itself strongly.

Yet Science and Letters departments are departments that, because of their research-and-development mission, need the highest-quality students. If departments that aspire to shoulder the country's scientific activity are to have graduates who will not find job opportunities, or whose opportunities will be restricted, they have no chance of attracting enough good students, and without getting good students they have no chance of developing themselves.

Thus YÖK's decision inflicts on the Faculties of Science and Letters a blow similar to the one that 28 February's coefficient practice dealt to vocational high schools. Where did this decision come from, what problem does it solve? It is impossible to understand. Narrowing the employment field of others in order to widen that of the graduates of faculties of education is neither a just solution nor does it have any efficiency. It also falls far behind the paradigm that has marked the 10 years of YÖK's and the government's work.

The consequences of this practice seem likely to inflict damage that is hard to repair on both scientific knowledge and human resources. Yet, saying that whichever point one turns back from the damage is a gain, let us also fulfill our duty of warning.