Turkey's young and "fast" universities

The level Turkey has reached in universitization over the last twenty years has a series of sociological, political, economic and cultural consequences. We can say that universitization is one of the most striking developments in terms of its relationship with both the development and the democratization history of Turkey. In saying this, of course, we have to say that we are facing a complex development with its positive and negative sides. That is, there is a universitization rate that has almost reached ten percent of the population. From another angle, a universitization rate that has risen from around 3 percent to 10 percent within a period of twenty years.

This is a development that must first of all be seen in its dimension of "speed." Speed in social development, even excessive speed, always leads to a series of complications and, together with the benefits expected of it, necessarily leads to very great problems as well. Rapid urbanization, rapid industrialization, rapid development and so on. However positive all the developments that come together with speed in all these may be, speed itself runs up against society's capacity to digest, and makes one live through the problems in question as well.

In saying that one of the most important development drives marking the AK Party's 23rd founding anniversary is in the field of universitization, we noted that Turkey has been made, as it were, a country of universities. Universitization, the institutionalization and development of scientific inquiry, is one of the goals declared in the early years of the Republic but not advanced by so much as a barleycorn's length. Truly, declaring a so-called goal is nothing; what is essential is whether one has walked toward that goal, whether one is willing to walk this road, and whether one is headed in a direction befitting that intention.

While we are at it, let us recall that in the early years of the Republic, nothing concrete was added for 27 years on top of the university structure inherited from the Ottomans. The only result of the university reform made in August 1933 was that the Darülfünun, which had not pledged allegiance in full submission to the official ideology, was closed and Istanbul University was founded in its place. In this transition the number of faculty members fell by almost half, the faculty members who could not adapt to the new system were dismissed, and the work continued with the faculty members whose full allegiance to the path was accepted. As for the DTCF established in Ankara, no mission beyond being an ideological apparatus of the system could be loaded onto it in the name of "scientific inquiry." Let us return to this later.

Universitization in Turkey has also developed in parallel with the country's finding itself a place at the international level or, further, having a claim.

Years ago Daniel Bell, with the addition of the service sector to the development routes oscillating between industry and agriculture, made it possible to reconsider all theories of development. In this new route, university education would have a key role, because the world of the future would be determined by white-collar services in very different and highly qualified fields, and the universities would train the people this new world would need. That is why universitization was the most important channel for competing in this world, for saying "I exist too," even for saying "I have a claim."

Turkey lost much time because of a bigoted secularist, self-colonized mindset that dominated the universities and drowned scientific inquiry in its own ideological stomach. We failed to put to use in time our human resources, our only means of more than compensating, and better, for the underground riches we lack. Whether it was the headscarf, the coefficient, the nativists, this or that, our universitization was interrupted for decades. Today we have a universitization that is advancing at an excessive speed to make up for the lost years, and that, with that speed, is making a difference in almost the whole world. Of course, with the problems, the side effects and perhaps the harms of excessive speed. For example, as we noted earlier, this excessive universitization has very traumatic effects on family life, on the balanced distribution in working life, and on our cultural life, and measures to assess these have still not been thought out.

However, there is also an ill-omened approach holding that excessive speed means compromising on quality and that universities remain "nothing but a sign." It is not possible to understand which period of the university in Turkey this approach, which keeps talking about universities in Turkey constantly going backward, is really taking as its baseline. We asked what kind of reference point they have from which they can establish that the level of the university is getting worse. Evidently we will keep asking that question and keep shedding light on those "more ideal" periods of the university taken as the baseline.

At this stage we can say that for several years we have been citing the classifications of Turkish universities made by evaluation and ranking organizations. According to these classifications, Turkish universities are seen to be making rapid progress in terms of measurable criteria in many respects in international ranking organizations too.

We had noted the linear rise, day by day, of Turkish universities among the first 500 and the first 1000 and beyond in the Times Higher Education (THE) all-universities ranking.

We have one more ranking in which we can see the position of the new universities opened especially in the last 20 years among the world's universities. The THE Young University Rankings list the world's best universities that are 50 years old or younger, and assess universities across all their core missions, teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook, to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons available.

The 2024 ranking includes 673 universities, and 499 institutions are listed with "reporter" status, that is, they have provided data but have not yet met the eligibility criteria to receive a ranking. In this ranking, Turkey, as last year, has again this year become the country with the most universities. As a result of the reviews, 58 universities from Turkey entered the Young University Rankings this year. In 2020, 23, in 2021, 31, in 2022, 40 and in 2023, 47 Turkish universities had appeared in the ranking.

According to the 2024 data, 2 Turkish universities in the top 100, 19 in the 101-500 range, 20 in the 501-600 range and 17 in 600+ succeeded in appearing in the ranking. Of these, 43 were state universities and 15 were foundation universities.

Both state and foundation universities appear on the list in a balanced way according to their weight in Turkey's higher education system.

These are, of course, developments that will sadden those who follow news and developments about universitization with a turned-up nose. Their immediately turning back to point to the worst examples or events and dismissing all developments about universitization is a familiar malicious attitude, but still the thing we cannot help asking is this: Was there a past in which the universities were better, and did we fail to see it?