Turkish Universities and Internationalization: A Major Task Falls to YÖK

I came across a very beautiful interview by Nuran Çakmakçı from Eğitim Radarı.  

She conducted a quite detailed interview on “Internationalization” in higher education with Prof. Dr. Sezer Komsuoğlu, who served as a Rector and advisor to the President of YÖK for many years.

Professor Sezer shared her views on the trends in higher education worldwide. 

She spoke about competition, the market, and quality. 

She referred to the importance of the social, cultural, economic, and political aspects of higher education.

She emphasized that Turkey also needs to review its master's and doctoral programs for students sent abroad.

I will address this topic in my future articles as well.

She stated that Turkey is among the top ten countries in the world in the field of international higher education and that the number of foreign students is expressed in the hundreds of thousands.

In short, she drew a roadmap for “Internationalization” in higher education that contains an algorithm.

While I agree with what our professor said, I would like to add a few more things.

It is not really possible to think of the orientation of higher education separately from the political orientation of the world. 

The G8 and G20 countries, which are classified by their economic and sociological development, will become even more talked about in the coming period, especially in the field of education. 

G8 countries are filled to the brim with immigrants from underdeveloped countries. Millions of young, old, and children are migrating toward G8 and G20 countries, crossing oceans, mountains, and hills at the risk of death.

As a G20 member, Turkey is, of course, the first destination.

The first station.

Then, from there, straight to a G8 country.

After all, there is a readmission agreement.

It is crystal clear from the news coming in that the G8 is now tired of this human flow, which resembles the Migration Period, and will close its doors more tightly.

They are now being more meticulous about visas, even for university education.

Even if they complete all the documents, such as the population information based on Roman-era family trees requested by consulates, it is almost impossible for them to get a visa, even for education.

Let's open a parenthesis.

The poor people who appear in European city squares in the evenings, wandering around with watch stalls on their backs, whom Europeans call “daytime lanterns” and whose livelihoods they have ruined, have now started to annoy the Europeans. 

The discomfort of the local population is being shoved in all our faces with videos of them beating people (kicking the immigrants they have cornered) that they occasionally post on social media.

It is said that the process of the “Purge of Andalusia,” written about in Matthew Carr’s book “Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain 1492–1614,” is being approached.

It is written that lists are being made, addresses are being determined, and the production of enough plastic handcuffs will soon be completed.

The ships are reportedly already waiting in the harbor.

There is also an impression that they will not send these people back to their homelands, but to our country as required by the readmission agreement.

As if there weren't enough poor refugee-immigrant Black people whose livelihoods have been ruined in Aksaray-Fatih-Çarşamba, which has become something like Mogadishu.

And let's close the parenthesis.

Previously, they raised university tuition fees, which were around five thousand dollars a year, to 20-30 thousand dollars.

They will raise them even further.

This situation makes the role of Turkey, which is in the G20, somewhat more important, as Greece, which wanted a piece of the pie last week, managed to pass the “Private University” law in its parliament, despite all the resistance, boycotts in schools, and occupations. Even the Greeks, who have had a strong red communist streak since the rebellion against the Ottomans in 1897, could not resist and had to open their higher education system to the outside.

As can be understood, more foreign, poor students will come from underdeveloped countries with collapsed systems in the coming periods.

Let them come.

Those who come, come with their own fortune.

However, for this foreign student education process to be sustainable, it is necessary to pay attention to the following points and make the necessary corrections:

Strengthening the academic, technical, and scientific infrastructure

Increasing the number of departments providing education in English

Increasing the quality of education

Not giving quotas to cities and universities that do not have the infrastructure. Please look carefully at the DRAMATIC news regarding the province of Karabük.

Employment support for “pilot academics-academic hybridization,” which refers to academics who have academic competence and are known in the country where the students come from

Solving the housing problem and increasing dormitory comfort

Raising the income level of Turkish academics to at least the level of a municipal police officer.

If we do these, foreign students will continue to come.

Why will they continue to come:

Dramatic price difference in tuition fees compared to the G8

No visa problem

Easy entry and exit to university

Cheap cost of living

Almost no racism and discrimination as in Europe

Proximity in culture and lifestyle

Diploma equivalence

Hospitality

I am writing all of this with the “Under Normal Conditions” premise taught in chemistry class.

I do not know what kind of change the mobility in our region and the new cold war scenarios will bring.

Will the disasters we faced after the peace treaty we signed with Russia in 1774, but which was broken in 1787, be repeated?

I don't know that either.

But there is one thing I know, and that is that no matter who comes, there must be an examination-supervision-elimination system.