It will be useful to group universities as "research" universities and "other" universities.

Many universities are completely introverted in contradiction with what the notion of university presupposes. Some of these are big universities which offer doctorate level programs. This means that they do not make effort to hire academics from different universities. What is more, they do not send young academics to abroad for doctorate studies. The members of such universities do not at all attend the national conferences.

Studying abroad

This is highly problematic. This is eating only what you cook. Think about it: numerous scientific developments take place, innovations occur. The majority of these happen in developed countries. We observe that the US leads the innovations in many disciplines. In that case, Turkey has to send many students to doctorate programs in these universities so that they can get to know about the innovations, learn how to innovate, return to Turkey and teach those innovations here so that the education level in Turkey advances.

If you close this door, you cut your own throat. You end up with professors equipped only with aged knowledge. They communicate that knowledge to their students and raise new academics. Then the quality goes downhill. This is what I meant with eating what you cooked. What is more, some of these universities are big ones. They sometimes are assigned to work for new universities in neighboring districts. Their professors and lecturers go to these new universities, open new programs and departments and teach.

The solution

There are two main steps to take in order to solve this problem which can and has been giving way to unfavorable outcomes. First is to send a high number of students to abroad for doctorate studies: not to any program but to the prominent programs of prominent universities. A non-academic example: the Central Bank of Turkey each year sends three-four members abroad for doctorate studies. The programs they can apply for are predetermined, like top 20 universities of the relevant field in the US.

The second step to take is the following and it must be taken immediately: to limit the number of universities that are authorized to open doctorate programs, defining certain criteria for opening doctorate programs, preventing the opening of new doctorate programs or closing the existing ones if the threshold criteria establishing high standards are not met. One way to do this might be introducing the classification I recommended in the second commentary of the series: research universities and other universities. "Other" universities must not be allowed to open doctorate programs and must target offering high-quality training at bachelor's degree.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 25.06.2011