Republic of turkey

6. BASIC CHOICES ON ETHICAL VALUES IN UNIVERSITY

Each society gets its respect from the presence of clearly identified ethical standards and its compatibility with these standards. In the previous sections of this study, it was pointed out that the society trusts the universities more than the other institutions. This is a quality that must be kept and improved. In order to do this, ethical standards should be improved by being thought over and agreed on by the universities and academic community should internalise this. It was after 1980s that Turkey’s sensitivity to ethical standards increased and discussions on this subject started but discussions were mostly limited to publication ethics. This study, suggesting an improvement strategy for the universities, regards universities’ ethical standards in all functional areas’ being made clear as a strategically important choice. Universities should make their ethical standards clear in four areas. These can be classified as following:

1. Ethical standards linked to the relationships between universities and society or keeping the borders of this relationship

2. Ethical standards linked to instructional function of higher education

3. Ethical standards linked to scientific research and publication

4. Ethical standards linked to the fact that the universities produce public service

The ethic area, which is to be stressed at the foremost importance, is about the protection of the cultural microcosm of the universities. This ethic area has already been mentioned while describing four main logics, which have been benefited upon determining strategies of the universities, at the very beginning of the report. The ethic area is going to make evident the borders between the university and the society. While this subject was being discussed, it was stressed that universities are faced with the danger of losing the qualities that distinguish them from other institutions, which was realized through providing the dominance of market values even at universities. Moreover, it was stressed that the devastation of this institution will mean the devastation of one of the most important cultural inheritance of humanity and because of this there will be great loss of people in the long run. Naturally, the border mentioned above is not the physical one but an ethos, which distinguishes the university from other institutions. The university, which establishes a relationship with society and the outer world by behaving according to this ethos, will have created a border, which displays its own identity. First of all, this ethos will dwell upon the attitudes, which have to be obeyed in order to continue its qualities that a university, as a microcosm, should possess. This microcosm is a free thinking zone. In this zone there is no place for discrimination, creation of otherness, violence and repressive approaches. It is a kind of atmosphere, where short period benefits do not hinder the long run thoughts, every question can be asked calmly and without hesitation and new curiosities are awakened. The existence of such an environment will provide us with the perception of existing operations both in Turkey and in the world, which makes us to perceive the threats beforehand and it will enable us to suggest attitude changes that should be done, without having experienced negative results. All of these mean that the university is exporting new ethical standards into the environment where the university takes place. It should not be forgotten that it is always necessary to rebuild ethical standards in our continuously changing and transforming world. One of the most important actors of this rebuilt will be the universities. The university, which has lost its microcosm, will not be able to realize its critical mission.

• It will be appropriate to deal with the ethical standards of education, which is one of the three main functions of the universities. In Turkey, as the research functions of the universities have been pointed out more, the ethical standards related to education have been neglected, recently. The standards related to the educational function should be founded in such a way that it will cover all stages of academic process. A university don should take serious of his function in education field; s/he should not ignore his/ her role and the existence of his/ her other works at the university should not put his function to the second rank. Every university don should be aware of the fact that he has undertaken the responsibility of utilizing the suitable pedagogical approaches in order to be able dominate the most valid knowledge and new advances and to be able to realize an effective education and training. Each university don should pay great attention in order not to damage a student’s honour while s/he is trying to increase the intellectual capacity of the student in hi/her field. The evaluation of student success is an inseparable part of the academic activities. At this step testing and evaluation techniques should be benefited and the subjective assessments should be avoided. The relationships between the university don and the student should be anonymous and it should not allow the development of giving some students preferential treatments.

In today’s world, the most important responsibility a university don should take is that he should avoid imposing his/ her own truths on students and should allow them to develop their creative capacities and to advance their academic project freely. A university don should be able to be respected to his/her students’ critical ideas. Furthermore, a university don should be aware of the fact that s/he is responsible not only to give information on his/her specific field but also to put forward the subject’s being interesting and to infuse excitement about it. Naturally, a university don should feel excitement himself in order to realize this mission. A university don in a higher education institution is not only in touch with his/her students. S/he lives in a community of academicians, which brings him/her responsibilities as a member of a community. These responsibilities consist of being in a respectful relationship with his/her other colleagues, undertaking responsibilities in both academic and social life by cooperation, which mean to be able to form a social capital and being respected to the identity of the institution, where s/he takes place. In this respect, a university don, who is supposed to evaluate his/her colleagues in their occupational promotions is faced with serious ethical responsibilities. A university don should give priority to the evaluations on the subjects, which are related with the employee personal rights of his/her colleagues within his studies and s/he should refrain from subjective judgments on these subjects.

• The second perspective of a university don’s ethical awareness is about generating knowledge and transmission by doing researches. A university is supposed to generate meaningful knowledge for both close and remote environment and to produce scientific contributions, which hold universal claims. All these require the university dons to be sensitive to both his environment and world problems and to possess the necessary knowledge and motivation in order to be able to generate new knowledge and techniques by questioning the existing knowledge and application methods.

A man of science is not only expected to make some discoveries by keeping his perceptions and intuitions awake, but also to be able to show the validity of the knowledge and generated technology in an appropriate way to the scientific methods and to establish consistency between his interested area and the knowledge of the past. Science is not realized behind closed doors but it is shared with many people. This sharing quality of the scientific knowledge can be based upon two reasons: The validity of the produced knowledge obtains clarity and reliability after it is proved with scientific methods, it is open to the inspection of the academic community by publishing and after it is finally exposed to this community’s criticisms. That is why publishing is a necessary procedure in order to be able to complete the process of generating scientific knowledge. The second reason is that knowledge is a public property, which means it does not reduce; on the contrary, multiplies when it is shared. Leaving scientific knowledge open to criticism means that it is open to be shown as invalidity. The essential power of scientific knowledge comes from its always being open to changes. The kind of knowledge, which is not open to change, is just a dogma and it is nothing to do with the academic community. The assignments and promotions in academic life become related to the number of publishing, which resulted in advancement of a lot of bad and embarrassing implications in both research and publishing areas.

That is why, academic communities are supposed to develop more detailed ethic rules. Some of them tended to make publications by behaving as is they did experiments while in reality they did not do anything or changing the results of the experiments in the way they wish and applying forgery. Naturally, a person, who has done forgery like that is nothing to do with the academic world. Some researchers tended to develop bad practices such as cutting their researches, publishing the same paper with small changes or plagiarism in order to increase the number of the publications, which they can show in their promotions. All of these can be interpreted as an unfair demand of respect form the society or disrespect towards their colleagues.

• As it was mentioned above, realizing the training and research functions of a university necessitates its producing public services as well. Naturally, this obligation does not remove the necessity of developing ethical rules in this field.

It is necessary to follow a transparent policy, which does not include any injustices in the ways of presenting the pubic services produced by the university to the society, in pricing these and in sharing the obtained income.

In the services that universities presented and will present to the public the sensitivity to the problems of low income groups and the subalterns should be at the highest level and universities should undertake defending advocacies for these groups.

Especially, the universities of underdeveloped regions should undertake pioneer roles in developing of the society and should try to reinforce these roles in lectures and researches as ethical standards require.