Ideals, rumours and facts about the university

Times Higher Education (THE), the London-based international higher education rating organization that publishes an evaluation report on world universities every year, announced this year's "World University Rankings" report on September 27 at the World Academic Summit in Sydney. According to this report, Turkish universities have passed another important threshold in the upward trend they have maintained for years. In other words, we face a picture different from what we tell one another within Türkiye about the quality of universities.

In this picture, 3 of our universities are in the top 500, 11 in the top 1000, and 75 in the rankings after that. This number, which was 61 last year, has risen to 75. Again in this picture, the number of universities from Türkiye entering the ranking has more than tripled compared to 2018; that is, there is a steady upward trend over the years. Among these 75 are quite a few Anatolian universities established after 2007. For example, this year Bartın University is within the top 1200, and Fırat University, which was in the top 1000 last year, is again in the 1001-1200 band this year, albeit with a slight decline. Thus Turkish universities have recorded an important step by becoming, in the overall ranking, the seventh best-represented country after giants such as the US, India and China.

When this report was published, the opposition voice immediately recomposed itself and tried to produce a reply. There was talk of the seriousness of these ranking organizations, or of their being organizations that position themselves according to the market. Yet it is the very same people who for years have been talking about the end of the university in Türkiye and asking why Turkish universities do not enter the top 500, the top 1000. The rankings in which they said universities did not enter were also earlier rankings by these same organizations. In the end these are university-rating organizations, like economic rating agencies. In fact, in our view too these are rankings that should not be exaggerated, but still, such organizations, as a mirror of evaluation, point to a numerical reality.

Indeed, THE (Times Higher Education) has concrete, numerical indicators it looks at when ranking universities. Accordingly, the organization evaluates research-focused universities on 18 performance indicators across 5 areas: 1- Teaching (the learning environment), 2- Research environment (volume, income and reputation), 3- Research quality (citation impact, research strength, research excellence and research influence), 4- International outlook (staff, students and research), 5- Industry (income and patents).

The university whose reality we witness may not fill our eye, but when its numerical reality is evaluated according to these criteria, a not at all negligible and positive picture emerges before us. Of course, why should we hesitate to say that this picture emerged as a result of the steps taken in the university field over the last 20 years? It is a picture of how, until 20 years ago in Türkiye, universities played no role beyond being purely ideological apparatuses of the state, were not even allowed to play one, whereas today the university is trying to seek its own ideal as a university in the real sense.

There is in fact everything that would require us to see this picture as a revolution that took place in the university field in Türkiye within 20 years. The meeting of university and city, university and industry, the removal of the provincial-center opposition, all the social and economic functions of the university, universalization, and so on. Of course, in every experience it is still possible for you to catch impressions of provinciality and devalue this development, to reduce what has been done to nothing with a gesture or two of the mouth.

Tuğba Tekerek's book titled "Provincial Universities: The AK Party's Back Campus" has reduced this whole comprehensive sociological development solely to its relationship with the AK Party, and, instead of seeing the developments, has seen only the shortcomings.

The back-cover text reduces to simplicity, in the following sentences, a phenomenon of massive university expansion that can no longer be ignored on a world scale: "...the 'university as an extension of political power' model in the provinces, which operates as an extension of the political power, in which the hiring of academics, as well as conferences and the founding of clubs, are carried out according to the instructions of the political power [...] where provincial universities now also train thousands of graduate students, and where graduate education after the bachelor's degree has been devalued..."

Throughout the book, to support these statements she has toured the universities opened after 2007 that she labels "provincial" and collected plenty of data. She can, of course, but the fact that the data she collected closes the story about the universities not only prevents her from seeing very different dimensions of a phenomenon but also tempts her reader into seeing nothing else.

Almost all the students she interviewed, especially at the universities of the East and Southeast, are HDP youth, and all their set formulas are doused with dramatic stories of freedom. The existence of student groups close to the AK Party, in contrast the HDP supporters' not being able to organize easily, not finding an area of activity suited to their views, and so on.

I have no room to go into the details, but let her try making the same assessment for the METU, Ankara, Hacettepe and Boğaziçi universities.

If you like, let me relay right away my findings based on real observations that have been tried. There she can find examples of the anti-AK Party, anti-Erdoğan ideology that are far more radical, and far more provincial, than any pro-AK Party activity at the universities she calls provincial.

A second finding: let a survey be conducted among both the faculty and the students of the universities regarded as the AK Party's back campus. No, let it not be conducted; there is data more real than a survey: the ballot box results. In these ballot boxes she can easily find complete diversity among all the parties. Indeed in many of them you will see far less than the AK Party's average vote at these campus ballot boxes.

Now let us apply the same exercise to the so-called central universities, the "liberated campuses of the left." You may see that either no votes or very few votes for the AK Party come out, like a preemption right in the form of alms. Is not the clear indicator of this that the universities newly opened in the AK Party period have not reached even a tenth of the exclusionism practiced in the universities where left-Kemalism still dominates?

Whose back campus are we talking about? If the AK Party had had any concern to create a back campus for itself, perhaps it would have been far more profitable politically for it never to have embarked on the universitization project at all.

Let us look at it in good faith: Tekerek visited perhaps 8 years ago, that is, in the very crawling stages of these universities, so she may not have followed their subsequent developments sufficiently. We are not even questioning the intention behind her focusing only on the scandalous aspects of the matter, but today she could see the scientific, research-and-development experience that Bingöl University, which she visited and tried to belittle, has demonstrated in making Bingöl honey the world champion. She could see the efforts that Siirt University, which she appears not to have visited, is now making in establishing Türkiye's first small ruminant ... unit and developing the small ruminant livestock of the region and indeed of all Türkiye on a scientific and technological basis.

Of course not every university is ambitious in every field, nor can it be. This is contrary, let alone to the ideal, to the very reality of the university. On the other hand, besides the 20 research universities in Türkiye, there is a specialization process being applied to 20 universities, and we will continue to watch its results with interest and with wishes for success.