Republic of turkey
The Performance of Higher Education System in Turkey Regarding its Research Function
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The Performance of Higher Education System in Turkey Regarding its Research FunctionIt could be said that, nowadays, the most important function which provides an institution of higher education with the respect of society; which turns it into a hope for the society is the activities of research and improvement. It is expected that it contributes to the world science, brings innovations into the society it belongs which will assure its competitiveness in the world and maintain it. Such a function constitutes the creative part of higher education institutions. The research performance of higher education in a country cannot be explained solely by improvements obtained in the institutions of higher education. It depends on many variables such as the characteristic of scientific and technological research institutions, the size of resources reserved for Research & Development (R&D), experience gained by research management, the amounts of full time researchers, the R&D demands of economy environments and politics. For this reason, in order to succeed in this area, the priority is now given to the establishment of “national innovation systems”. Obviously, universities play a critical role within those systems. In 2003, Turkey reserved 0.66% of its Gross Domestic Product to R&D. The same year, the percentage is 3,76% in Sweden, 2,82% in Korea, 2,8% in Japan, 2,62% in USA, 2,25% in France, 0,92% in Pakistan, 0,26% in Jordan, 0,22% in Egypt. Turkey has raised the concerning percentage to 0, 79%. Turkey shall raise the part it reserved to R&D from the GDP to more than 2% in a certain period, since it aims to be a part of the European Research Area within the process of participation to the EU. However, even if Turkey decides to make R&D expenses in such a level, it will not be able to make an expense of such amount because of the bottleneck in the number of the research staff.
In 2002, the number of research and development staff per one thousand working population was 12 in Germany, 15.2 in Denmark, 6,8 in Italy, 5,1 in Poland, 7,7 in Greece (in 2001), while 1,4 in Turkey. This number should be taken into account when evaluating the performance of Turkey and its universities. The Supreme Council of Science and Technology adopted the Science and Technology Policies Implementation Plan (2005-2010) in its meeting dated 10th March 2005. According to this plan, Turkey envisages to increase its R&D expenses to 2% of GDP and the number of fulltime scientific personnel to 40.000. Two criteria are used in general in evaluating higher education’s research functions, particularly those of universities. First is the number of postgraduate (especially doctorate) students and graduates, the second is the number of articles published in International Citation Indexes such as Science Citation Index (SCI), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) and Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI). Those criteria, being significant to the universities, do not include the function of contributing to the universities for innovation processes of their society and improvement of local information. Such an absence results in the trivialization of research activities within the environment of higher education, which could contribute to local development instead. The improvement of the first of those criteria, namely, the number of those who graduated from postgraduate programmes in the last decade is presented in Table 39. Table 39: Number of Students Graduated from the Master’s, Doctorate and Medical Specialization Programmes, 1993-2004 Y.
Source: OSYM Data As shown in Table 39., in the last decade, there has been a four times increase in the number of master’s graduates and two times increase of those who received doctoral and medical specialization degrees. Despite this rise, especially the number of doctoral graduates is very far from making up for the lack of lecturers and researchers of our country. Table 40 gives the Turkey-sourced publication numbers published in journals which are scanned by international citation indexes and the variety of Turkey’s place among world classification in years following those publications. Table 40: Turkey-Sourced Scientific Publication Numbers Published in Different Citation Indexes
Source: Council of Higher Education: Türk Yükseköğretiminin Bugünkü Durumu (Current Situation of Higher Education in Turkey), Ankara, November 2005, p.109. As seen in above, our publication number had a 30 times increase in the last 20 years in the field of sciences (basic, engineering, health, agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry) and Turkey recorded a success of rising from 43rd row to 20th in world classification. Turkey’s intense interest to this indicator in relating nominations and promotions to the performance in this field in universities and in rewarding such publications had a significant contribution. In 1985, Turkey maintained its position in world classification in each three indexes. Turkey’s moving its place to upper rows in Science Citation Index of Sciences was quicker when compared to other indexes. In 1985, it moved its 43rd place to the 27th in 1998, and then to the 20th in 2004. In Social Sciences Citation Index, it rose from 47th row of 1985 to 33tr in 1998 and to 27th in 2004. In Art and Humanities Citation Index, rose from 42nd in 1985 to 29th in 1998; however, fell back to 34th in 2004. It is also noted that there is a move backwards in the number of journals of Turkey, scanned by the Art and Humanities Citation Index.61 Turkey had a contribution of 1, 30% to nearly one million journals in the field of sciences published in 2004 within the scope of SCI. 2004. In 2004, Turkey’s contribution was noted to be of 0,40% to nearly 132.225 articles published within the scope of SSCI; 0, 12% to 36.854 articles published within the scope of AHCI. 98, 2% percent of Turkey sourced articles were published by our universities, only 1,8% of those by researchers in other public and private sector institutions. It is a general tendency that in citation indexes, the SCI shares of the developing countries such as Turkey are higher than their shares in SSCI and AHCI. USA’s share in the 2002 SCI was 39%, while 63% in SSCI, 53,71% in AHCI. It is possible to explain this differentiation with the fact that publishing in the last two fields requires a solid knowledge of foreign language. Table 41 is created in order to indicate the differentiation of the publication performance abroad within the fields of science. This table shows the percentage of Turkey sourced publications in each field among world publications between 2001-2005. There are significant variations in terms of fields. Obviously, those variations are closely related to the improvement date and improvement model of each field in Turkey. In general, despite an increase in the number of publication performance of Turkey, an obvious decline is noted in the number of citations of those publications. Turkey’s share in the total number of citations is 0, 49%, while 0, 69% of the number of publications throughout the world between 1997-2002 is Turkey-sourced. “1% most cited publications” constitutes a separate category as those highly cited among scientific publications. The share of Turkey sourced publications among highly cited publications is 0, 12%. The overall citations for each publication is 6, 04 around the world, while it is 4, 21 for Turkey sourced publications.62 Annex 20 demonstrates the figures related to the number of Turkey sourced publications scanned by international citation indexes and the developments in the citations made to those. In figure 1 are indicated the increases in the numbers of Turkey’s publications in all fields (SCI, SSCI, A&HCI). A continuous and rapid increase is observed in those numbers. In figure 2 is indicated the changes in all citations made to those publications. And in figure 3, the developments in citation numbers made for each publication. The fall in the citations number in Figure 2 and Figure 3 since 2001 should be considered to be normal. However, a fall is observed again in the number of citations since 1997.
Annual developments in the field of Social Sciences (SSCI) are given in Figure 4-5, and those of Arts and Human Sciences (A&HCI) in Figure 7-8 and 9. Since the fluctuations in the curves are low, the graphics are drawn between Figure 10 and Figure 15 by using total values of 5 Years. It is observed in the graphics a fall in the number of publications of Arts and Human Sciences. There is a fall in citations per publications in both fields. Turkey’s comparison with EU member and candidate countries regarding the number of scientific publications is given in Table 42. In the comparison of the number of publications, Turkey holds the 10th row among 27 countries. When this comparison is made regarding the publication number per one million, it is observed that Turkey has a place only in the 24th row. When this criteria is considered, it is observed that Sweden has publications of 12 times more than Turkey, Germany, 4,4 times, Greece, 3,5 times. It would be unfair to say that this indicator is due to the inefficiency of researchers in Turkey. The number of those who work in research and development of those countries is much more different. It would be better to compare the complete fulltime equivalence offered by OECD to the number of publication per each R&D staff. In a study carried out by the Turkish Academy of Sciences, 0.80 publications are noted for each fulltime research and development staff between 1996-1999. The same number is 0,96 in Switzerland, 0,89 in the United Kingdom, 0.85 in Sweden, 0.78 in Italy, 0.54 in France, 0.50 I Germany, 0.37 in Poland, 0.10 in Romania.63 When calculations are made regarding last years, it will be observed that the number of publications per researchers in Turkey rises more.
Table 42: Comparison of Turkey and European Union Member and Candidate Countries in terms of the Numbers of Scientific Publications
Source: YÖK (Council of Higher Education), Türkiye Yükseköğretiminin Bugünkü Durumu (Current Situation of Higher Education in Turkey), November.2005, p.116. It is understood that it has been influential that Turkey relates academic nominations and promotions to foreign publications and encourages foreign publications in special ways since 1990s. On the other hand, it is noted that a certain level is approached concerning publication numbers per researcher. It is understood that now it is time to focus more on quality rather than quantity, in the publication encouragement policies. In this respect, Figure 18 created by Turkish Science Academy is inspiring. Figure 18 shows a horizontal curve in the fields of doctorate though there is a vertical rise in the publication number since school year of 1993-94, particularly since 2001. While focusing more on production of publication, universities are not able to increase the production of doctoral degree. It is necessary that Turkey accelerates the increase in the number of doctorates in order to increase the number of publications from now on and to improve its quality of publication. Since a significant increase in the number of doctoral degree will not only meet the need of lecturers in higher education but also will make up for the lack of research development staff, it will also make it possible to increase the share reserved by GDP in this respect. A rapid increase of the resources reserved for R&D cannot be met solely with public sources. It is now obvious that the R&D share of industrial sector needs to be increased immediately. Industrial share in R&D expenses in Turkey is nearly 40%, while this rate is nearly as 60-70% in European countries. First, the number of researchers should be increased for the efficient use of the resources left. The number of researchers per one thousand working people is 1,1 while the rate is 5,8 in EU countries and 8,6 in USA. In the Document of National Science and Technology, it is anticipated that this number in Turkey shall rise to 6 by 2013 and reach a very high rate. Again, in the same document, the number of lecturers is aimed to reach 150.000 by 2003. As mentioned before, it is not possible to make up for the scientists’ and researchers’ lack by training only 2-3 thousands of staff with doctorate degree. 
16000 14000 12000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0 -Number of Publications - The number of doctorate graduates Source: TÜBA (Turkish Academy of Sciences): Doktora Eğitimi Üzerine Görüşler (Views on Doctorate Education).2006 Figure 18: Doctorate Degree and Developments in the Number of International Publications As mentioned before, in 2004, 98,2% of Turkey sourced articles are published by universities, only 1,8% of them by other public and private institutions. Those numbers clearly indicate that research activities are still concentrated on universities. There is a differentiation also in universities concerning research performance. With the aim of showing this differentiation, Table 43 is created which offers the numbers of publications per one lecturer. When interpreting this table, fulltime equivalence lecturer numbers are not included. If fulltime equivalence research staff numbers could be calculated by regarding the course loads lecturers, the number of publications per person would be given higher. Table 43 indicates that in 2004, total publication number in universities out of the three big cities is 7.045, and the number of publication in three big cities is 7.342. In 2005, the number of publications per lecturers in state universities of three big cities is 0, 56, this rate is 0, 56 in state universities out of three big cities. Table 43: The Number of Publications per Publications of Journals with International Indexes in 2004 and Lecturers
(The numbers of Lecturers were obtained from the 2003-2004 academic year Higher Education Statistics of Student Selection and Placement Centre. Only the full articles were used in evaluations) There is not sufficient information on the quality of research activities. Yet there are two findings. First is the fact that, despite the rise in the number of publications, there is not any improvement concerning the influential factors of those publications. See (ANNEX 20). Other criteria of quality that could be more important than that is to what extent the researches are turned into productions. Unfortunately, we do not have sufficient statistical data also on this issue. Yüklə 2,86 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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