Private Versus Public Universities: The Turkish Experience



Private Versus Public Universities: The Turkish Experience

İhsan Doğramacı

Chairman of the Board of Trustees and President

Bilkent University, Ankara

Abstract

In Turkey until 1981 all university education was public and private higher education was unconstitutional. In that year a constitutional amendment allowed private foundations to establish universities provided they be non-profit, adequately endowed and that the standard of teaching and research was no lower than that of public universities. This opened the door, and in 1984 Bilkent University became the first private institution of higher learning in Turkey. Today one third of the 75 Turkish universities are private, which provides us with ample opportunity to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the two types of institution. After serving as the executive head of two public universities and chairman of the board of trustees of another, 20 years ago I established the first private university. This gives me a chance to present my personal experience regarding the theme of this 2005 I.C.H.E.

A quarter of a century ago the 1st International Conference on Higher Education met in Ankara and witnessed the taking shape of a radical reform in Turkish higher education. In order to set the stage for a description of that reform and the changes it has brought about, let me tell you briefly how higher education in this country had developed over its centuries-old history prior to 1980.

The establishment of Turkish universities dates back to the Seljuk era. These Anatolian madrassahs of the early 11th century were private institutions of learning established by foundations or “waqf”. Among these, the Istanbul Madrassah, which was established in 1471, may be considered a university of both private and public nature in the sense that it was established by a foundation but also received generous support from the government. The first public university in Turkey was the Istanbul Darülfünun, not established until 1846. "Darülfünun" means "house of arts and sciences", like the oldest university founded in Bologna which was called "studium generale." The Darülfünun underwent a radical change in 1933, and its name was changed from Darülfünun to Istanbul University. The first private university in the modern sense could be said to be the one established by a group from the United States of America in Istanbul in 1863 – Robert College (today continuing in existence as a public institution, Boğaziçi University).

The law governing higher education during the pre-Republic period did not include concrete provisions regarding the means of establishing learning institutions, but Article 120 of the Constitution of 1961 required that universities be established by the state exclusively. Nevertheless, private institutions of higher education were established using the name “higher school” instead of “university”, in that way circumventing the constitutional provisions. By 1970, there were 15 of those so-called “higher schools” in Istanbul, 10 in Ankara, 8 in Izmir, 2 in Eskişehir and 2 in other provinces, amounting to 37 in all. They offered baccalaureate degrees and doctorates. They were not non-profit. The excuse for their existence was that those who could not enter public universities, instead of going abroad for higher learning, could by attending them remain in Turkey. On 26 March 1971, the Constitutional Court, in considering an application made to the Council of State (“danıştay”) by two universities (Istanbul University and Ankara University), ruled that those schools of higher learning, while not using the name, were carrying out the same functions as universities and were therefore unconstitutional. As a result they were all closed, with financial compensation being granted to the founders of the schools. The students were transferred into so-called academies – state institutions of higher learning which had been established by different ministries. Ten years later, in 1981, the same Act that created the Council of Higher Education incorporated all post-secondary education in Turkey into the universities, and the academies which were in existence at the time, together with their academic staff, were made a part of the university closest to them.

Before coming to the specific topic of private vs. public universities in Turkey, I want briefly to outline the changes that have taken place over the past quarter of a century.

In 1982, following the addition to the Turkish Constitution of two vital articles, foundations were permitted to establish institutions of higher education, provided that they be non-profit. A year earlier, in 1981, a radical reform had taken place in Turkish higher education that occasioned the 1st International Conference on Higher Education that met in Ankara that year. The act governing higher education provided for such private institutions, stipulating that they must meet the criteria set by the Council of Higher Education, a new organization which had been established the previous year, on 6 November 1981. According to those criteria, a private university must have adequate endowments to meet a part of its expenses, and the level of education and research must be no lower than that of the public university geographically closest to it. In addition, a private university, prior to being chartered, must enter into a formal agreement with one of the public universities, to provide for the possibility of its being closed by the Council of Higher Education as not up to standard. By that agreement, all property of the private university would be handed over to the public university, and the public university would accept the students of the disbanded private university.

In Turkish higher education there is a strict system of numerus clausus. No more than one-third of the candidates to higher education can be admitted, which leads to fierce competition. It is usual for more than 1.7 million applicants to take the exam although there are only some 395,000 places in the universities and 230,000 places in the open university, which offers distance learning. Therefore, the Council of Higher Education established an Examination and Placement Center, which administers an entrance examination in all provinces of Turkey and in certain places outside the country. The results of the examination are announced in the press. Each candidate may apply to up to 24 study programs out of a total of 8044, listing them in order of preference. Those with the highest scores on the exam have the chance of being admitted to one of their top choices.

The results of this year's exam were announced just six days ago. Of the top 100 scorers out of the 1.7 million who took the exam, 32 preferred Bilkent, the first private university. Of the remaining 68, 30 chose Boğaziçi University, 14 chose Middle East Technical University, 12 Hacettepe University, six Sabancı University, three Fatih University, two Koç University and one chose Istanbul University (Figure 1).

It is of interest to note that of these 100 top candidates, 43 chose private universities, namely Bilkent, Sabancı, Fatih and Koç. The remaining 57 selected Boğaziçi, Middle East Technical and Hacettepe University, three institutions that have different histories from the other public universities (Figure 2). Boğaziçi University in Istanbul is the successor of Robert College, the first non-profit private university in Turkey, established in 1863. Middle East Technical University was established by a special act and opened in Ankara in 1956. Its charter made it very similar to U.S. universities, with a board of trustees that appointed the rector and made policies. It also had a free hand in financial matters. Hacettepe University, which was chartered in 1967, also became a university through a special act, which included an article which gave the power of appointment of the rector to the university senate rather than having the academic staff elect the rector as in other public universities. Another article gave the university senate authority in all financial matters. And still another article imposed full-time employment on the teaching staff. In that university the Hacettepe Foundation supplemented the salaries so that teaching staff would not need outside employment, or private practices, particularly in the case of physicians, in order to enjoy a decent standard of living. Although these three universities became public institutions under the act of 1981, they inherited practices that had a positive effect on their functioning in subsequent years.

The 1981 reform act had created the Council of Higher Education. One-third of the Council's membership is elected from all the universities, one-third is appointed by the Government, and the other one-third is appointed by the head of state. This Council proposes three candidates to the head of state, who appoints one of them as rector.

In accordance with the law on higher education, the Council of Higher Education supervises all Turkish universities and institutes of technology through a committee which examines the progress of these universities, the standards of teaching, the faculty, and the research facilities.

Private universities are not subject to the Council's oversight for financial or administrative issues. Thus they enjoy a far greater ease of action than do the public universities. Each private university has a Board of Trustees, which appoints the rector of the university and other senior members of the administration on the proposal of the rector. In matters of finance, the Board of Trustees adopts the budget and has the authority to re-allocate funds to areas which in its judgment need more financial assistance than originally planned on. In theory, the Government can contribute financially to the private universities, but so far this has not amounted to more than about 2% of their budgets. The private university also sets its own tuition fees, but by law a certain percentage of the students must be granted scholarships to cover the tuition costs.

Let me now turn in more detail to the private universities. After the Constitution was amended, Bilkent University was the first to be established, in December 1984 in Ankara. In 1992 Koç University followed as the first private university in Istanbul, and in 1994 Başkent University was created in Ankara. In the subsequent decade 21 more private institutions of higher education were established, 14 of them in Istanbul, four in Ankara, two in Izmir and one in the south in Tarsus.

Among other provisions, the reform act calls for consideration of research and publications in the promotion of teaching staff and also discourages employment outside the campus or in private medical practices. This led to a remarkable improvement in Turkish higher education both in quality and quantity.

In quantity, it raised enrollment of the 20-24-year-old age group from 6.3% to almost 33% in a quarter of a century (Figure 3). This happened even though the Turkish population rose from 45 million to 70 million during that time. In 1980 there were 19 universities, but today there are 77, of which 24 are private (Figure 4).

Let us now come to the numbers of students. During the past quarter of a century the number increased from 233,000 in 1981 to 350,000 in 1986 and to 1,300,000 in 2004. In 1982 the number of teaching staff was 20,000; in 1986 it was 23,000. This figure is now almost 80 ,000 (Figure 5). If we consider the first five years after the reform law as a time used to develop and expand the teaching staff, we see that this has made it possible for the ratio of students per teaching staff member over the past 18 years since 1986 to change very slightly, from 15.3 to 16.8, despite the enormous increase in the number of students.

As a measure of progress in quality, if we look at research output, we need only to observe the number of publications included in the internationally recognized Citation Indexes. Turkish authors accounted for only 450 articles in 1982 but 12,000 in 2004 (Figure 6). This means that Turkey ranked only 44th in the world in 1982, but by 2004 had advanced to a proud 20th (Figure 7). It should be noted that in research activities private universities are well represented. According to the statistics formally annouced by the Council of Higher Education for 2004, among the Turkish universities, Bilkent is in first place with respect to publications per faculty member, with a ratio of 1.21. Three of the top six universities are private (Figure 8): Bilkent, Koç and Başkent.

In short, the Turkish experience shows that the establishment of strictly non-profit private universities has influenced the public universities to raise their standards of teaching and research. So let me tell you more about the first private university to be founded following the 1981 reform in the Turkish higher education law.

Bilkent University was the first private university to be established in the Republican period. It was established by three foundations, created with the Doğramacı Family's financial support (Figure 9). The charters of each of those foundations, created decades earlier, had included among their objectives the establishment of non-profit institutions of higher education. The foundations had already in the 1960s bought land in a farming village some 15 km west of the city center and had started groundbreaking and construction in the hope that one day a private university could be established. All the land was registered as property of the foundations, not in the name of any individual. After 1982, i.e. following the Constitutional amendment, preparations were accelerated, and Bilkent University accepted its first students in 1986. It was really in that year that construction reached its peak, including housing for both teaching staff and students, the library and a building for the student union.

In the first year that it admitted students, it was a pleasant surprise for Bilkent to learn that the candidate with the highest score throughout the country had chosen Bilkent as his first choice. The same happened the next year, in 1987. As mentioned earlier, the results of the 2005 placement process have also demonstrated the popularity with the best students of Bilkent and other private universities.

Bilkent University's main source of income is its business enterprises. The university owns over 60 companies, the main shareholders of which are the three foundations which established the university. No real person has any share in these business enterprises; they are all part of Bilkent Holding, of which Bilkent University possesses 99% of the shares directly and 1% indirectly. It may be of interest to mention that the new Istanbul Airport was built by the company TAV, 50% of which belongs to Bilkent University. The contract for operating the airport has recently been awarded to the company for the second time, to continue until 2020. Currently the Ankara and Izmir airports in Turkey and the Cairo airport in Egypt are being built by that same company. Just a week ago the contracts for two airports in the Republic of Georgia, Tbilisi and Batum, were awarded to the same group. The two highest skyscrapers in Istanbul were built by a Bilkent company as well.

It is worth noting that in private universities, academic positions are established by the institution and academic staff are appointed on contract for a certain period, during which they are subject to surveillance. The contract may be renewed or not, according to the evaluation of their performance. With public universities, however, as with most positions in the civil service, appointment of new academic staff requires opening of the required position by the government. Once the appointment is made, termination as a result of academic evaluation is not common.

Bilkent University has established its own criteria for academic evaluation, and promotions are made yearly, in part according to the results of this evaluation, which takes into consideration not only the number of publications or quality of research but also quality of teaching, judged also by the students and alumni.

Many challenges still face the universities, but today, even those who at one time were in doubt, now agree that the establishment of the private universities has improved the level of teaching and research at public universities by motivating a healthy competition.

In conclusion, the Turkish experience shows that private universities, provided that they are truly non-profit, not only make it possible to increase the number of students attending tertiary education but also appear to raise the level of research throughout the higher education system.

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