Prospects for European Integration: Turkish Higher Education

Abstract

The development of higher education and research constitutes a possible pathway to innovation and global competitiveness. Nation states, however, often seek the quickest adaptations, with minimum investment, ignoring essential political and structural changes. Turkey maintains its highly centralized system of higher education observing the national policies in the field. This paper addresses the international aspects of Turkish higher education, with special focus on student and academic mobility. Present day Turkish higher education system has been shaped by two dominant major events: the post‐Soviet era and the country's integration into the European Union.

Notes

The House of Sciences, the first modern higher education institutions in the Ottoman State.

Lit., place of study, in Arabic, after darasa ‐ to study. As a technical term, darasa, means ‘to study Jurisprudence’; darrasa, meaning ‘to teach Jurisprudence’, was a college for the professional study of Islamic sciences, such as Jurisprudence (feqh), but also of the Koran, the Hadith (Hadis), and such ancillary fields as Arabic Grammar and Philology. The so‐called ‘foreign sciences’, such as Philosophy and Medicine were also part of a learned education, as did Literature after its distinction from the Islamic sciences.

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