Score after score, score after score, here is your score

Universities are facing serious tests all over the world. 

We are getting more than our fair share of this, even if we have lost our sense of balance.

Rectors have also started chasing high-scoring victories. 

Just as gambling instruments like betting and sports wagering have turned world sports upside down, universities are facing the same risk. 

In competitions where gambling is involved, match-fixing is now even seen as a necessity when required.

Beyond who will win the match, those who predict the answers to questions like whether there will be a goal in the first half, how many corners there will be, whether a yellow card will be issued, who will score the first goal, whether there will be over two-and-a-half goals, or who will score the first goal in the second half, are winning three to five times their stake.

If you play for an upset, you can even win 20 to 30 times your stake.

If you even guess the score of the match, it's like hitting the jackpot, a real windfall.

As long as you study the statistics well and play accordingly.

Professors have started fixing things too.

Recently, the Netherlandswhen a professor from a famous university was caught publishing in predatory/fake journals.

I did it, but go ahead and ask me why I did it!

That was the defense provided.

They asked, why did you do it?

The professor replied, this much intense pressure to publish hinders my communication with students.

I was allocating the time I should have spent on teaching students to writing articles. 

The publication process was very painful, and the absurd corrections and rejections I received were frustrating me.

Once I realized that the rectorate based article evaluations on quantity rather than quality, I had ChatGPT write the articles using plagiarized data.

In the meantime, my article count increased logarithmically.

When it increased, I even received awards from the rector several times.

I even became an advisor to the rector. 

My successes became a topic of conversation everywhere.

I was being pointed out in the cafeteria.

If I hadn't been caught, my h-index would have reached 50.

I might have even become the rector.

Our current academic life is exactly like this.

To become an associate professor, there is a system based solely on numbers where quality is irrelevant.

Now that the oral exam requirement has been lifted, there are no obstacles left to publishing in predatory journals.

At an average state university today, one is left astonished to see young academics who have surpassed Aziz Sancar, receiving awards every month for having the highest number of publications.

It makes one envious.

The fabricated award ceremonies shared by social-media-obsessed rectors are playing with the integrity of other academics who are striving to produce fewer but higher-quality publications. 

In any case, it is impossible to produce both high-quality and high-volume research.

Recently, while reviewing the quite impressive publication performance of an academic applying to our department, the fact that their co-authors had been dismissed due to FETÖ ties clearly explained the situation.

Academics who have never held a book in their lives, with their unkempt beards, have grown weary from receiving awards.

Much like the saying that nightingales do not sing where crows caw, many high-quality professors have either stepped aside or retired.

The fault, of course, does not lie with these children, but with the autistic system that drives them to this crime.

Instead of preparing a high-quality article that is laborious and time-consuming, academics who fulfill the requirements of the system are more desirable than those like Aziz Sancar, because 5-10 articles written in a few hours, with guaranteed publication, requiring no laboratory or experimental setup, and featuring crony editorial boards, increase the university's publication count.

There are even some foundation universities that rank ahead of the oldest Turkish universities with 70-80 years of history in international rankings.

For some reason, no one on campus knows or has even seen the academics who propel them to the top of these rankings.

It is said that they do not even have an office in the faculty. 

Or they have a nameplate, but the person themselves is nowhere to be found.

But it is not as if Turkish academics did not actually like this method.

When it matched with the score-chasing and the obsession stemming from adolescence, they had no trouble adapting at all.