Most of the people around the world thinks the same universities like Harvard and Oxford as the world’s best universities but if you ask them the reason they won’t give you an acceptable reason unless they haven’t graduated from those universities. Recently, organizations that rank universities like Times Higher Education (THE) and QS World Rankings showed that most of the people are right. Besides they have adduced some proofs which we can understand the difference between universities.
Researches of these organizations indicates that educating is not the most important thing while comparing universities. They also pay attention to other things like international student ratio and citations. Another criteria is employment ratio, students who graduated from better universities usually find jobs easily. Organizations rank universities in terms of this decisive factors.
First class Turkish Universities have been able to get in the world’s best 500 universities. The best one is around 300th but the percentage of first class universities quite low. There are a few good universities in Turkey but they are not good to compare with the ones in other developed countries.
Unfortunately public universities in Turkey don’t have the chance to fix this completely for the reason that government treat academicians as officers and don’t give enough attention to them. Besides the council which assigns academicians is not independent, politicians can easily affect this council called “YÖK”.
However there are lots of things that universities can do to improve their own .First of all the universities should increase the number of qualified academicians. There are lots of students but there isn’t enough academicians to teach them. They should enrich the existing academicians by encouraging them to submit essays, do researches and have academic publishing. Academicians have really important role in terms of educating. Students gather information from academicians most of the time. In terms of obtaining information library is essential and should be improved. World’s best universities have the best libraries which shows the importance of it.
Education style is also important Turkish universities don’t make the students productive and this is a really big problem. Turkey needs productive young people to develop the country and accordingly develop the universities. This topic is also related with the high school and primary school system because these are the places actually a child learns how to be productive. The issue is universities generate learned man but those men can’t produce anything. Therefore don’t have any benefits. Universities should work on raising productive and beneficial people.
Turkish universities care more about theoretical education than education based on application unlike the best universities. This education style is more beneficial than theoretical education because students learn better when they actually do it. Application based education gives students experience about their future jobs. Therefore they have advantage in terms of getting employed. Application based education requires more money than theoretical education. Universities should bear the cost in order to improve themselves.
Top universities have a big variety of exchange programs. Exchange programs are important for students to obtain information from different sources and meet new people. Most of the Turkish universities have exchange programs but very few universities have connections with top 100 universities. Universities should make connections with better universities in order to benefit from their sources.
Opportunities given to students are critical. Ultimately, students will make the changes by becoming productive and innovator. Universities have the most important role in terms of raising such students. One of the most important ways of raising qualified students are opening and supporting social clubs. Social clubs are operated by students. Therefore they have experience on management and they start taking responsibilities. Several Turkish universities have understood the importance of social clubs, even though the support given by university administration is not enough. The best ones like Harvard and MIT spend a lot more money compared to our universities this shows us social clubs are important.
Turkish universities are improving but if they want to appear on top 100 they should put more effort. If Turkish universities can manage to close the gap they will be appear on the top places. Students and government also give the required effort with universities. Turkish universities can and should improve themselves in order to develop the country. Education is the key for development.
Author: M. Orhan Yıldırım
