Republic of turkey

13. THE STRATEGIES WHICH SHOULD BE FOLLOWED IN THE APPOINTMENT AND PROMOTION OF ACADEMIC PERSONNEL AND THEIR SELF IMPROVEMENTS

The achievement of a higher education institution depends on the training of its academic personnel, its innovating itself and maintaining its motivation. Therefore, the universities which contend with each other have a competition about developing their academic staff. The universities which attract the successful academicians and keep them maintain their success.

In the higher education system of Turkey, strategic selections should be done about the training of academicians so that it can have progress.

These can be counted as follows;

1. augmenting the pool of the trained academicians and researchers in Turkey.

2. those having competence criteria and required qualifications should become the academicians

3. letting the channels for the academicians open to improve themselves during their whole life

• The success of the universities for constructing an academic staff mainly depends on the enormity of the pool of trained human resources. Since in the previous strategy the way which should be followed in order to increase the man power with doctorate degree has been explained, this matter will not be discussed here again.

• The newly established universities should be especially more careful about training academicians. The universities which had to start teaching without adequate number of instructors have some problems for development and experiencing new leaps. The implementation of 35^th article which has been put into effect to solve this problem in recent years should be maintained with some improvements. The research assistants who have been appointed at the developing universities are employed at a developed university to complete their graduate education in accordance with 35^th article. There has been a problem about whether these research assistants should be selected by the university where they will be employed after the graduate education or by the university where they will complete the graduate education. The implementation of a central examination which was recommended in the previous part will be an effective solution. Another solution is to select and organize juries in which members from both of the universities. Moreover, this program can be improved in a way to provide an opportunity for education abroad and it can become a unified doctorate program.

• Competitive processes depending upon competence issue can be more successfully implemented in the appointment of the academicians to the extent that the pool of man power is augmented. There are many criticisms related to the fact that the entrance to the academic life in Turkey depends on the loyalty to the professors at the department rather than the competence rule. One of the solutions is to make the appointment processes transparent and indirectly it becomes questionable.

• The appointments of the academicians mainly depend on the scientific success. Whether these academicians have the pedagogical formation which can be useful to be a successful teacher is not taken into consideration. In order to fill this gap, some opportunities should be created so that those assigned as academicians can improve their pedagogical formation.

• The tendency of appointing their own students (inbreeding) as academicians at the universities in Turkey is very high. This application can pose negative results. A student who has completed the doctorate degree at a university should avoid being appointed to the same university without having studies at different universities in Turkey or abroad. If the student completing the doctorate degree is employed in another institution than the one in which s/he completed doctorate degree, s/he will transfer the culture of the former institution to the latter and he will be able to have an idea about the quality of the doctorate program and the institution.

• Besides, some plans depending on the mobility of the academicians should be done for the increase of the quality of the academic staff of a university. This mobility should not only be in Erasmus program, but also it should be encouraged among the universities in Turkey. It will be very useful if the universities develop a housing program to make this mobility easy. In addition, the academicians should be allowed to have seventh year vacations at other universities in Turkey.

• For the purpose of training sufficient number of qualified academic staff, the Turkish or the foreign academicians should be encouraged to have their seventh year vacations at the universities in Turkey as guest researchers or guest academicians.

• During their academic career, all the ways for the self development of the academicians should be always open. In this context, the post doctorate education of the academicians should be encouraged; scholarships should be offered after doctorate degree; foreign researchers should be encouraged to come to Turkey after their doctorate degrees.

• The academicians should be encouraged to make good use of the facilities provided by (TÜBAGEBİP) TÜBA Awarding Program for Highly Successful Young Scientists and TÜBİTAK’s Career Projects

• While the young scientists are encouraged, the idea that today the scientific success is attained by an interactive research group rather than successful individuals should be adopted and therefore the constitution of research groups should be encouraged as well. Thus, an effective environment should be prepared for the academicians to keep their motivation high in the group and to deepen their improvement by the help of mutual learning processes.

• The academicians should be awarded so as to maintain their study in an enthusiastic mood and to keep their motivation high at a university where all the facilities to improve themselves are always open. It is of great importance that awarding should depend on the transparent promotion mechanisms working truthfully.

• In this context, it is very significant that there should be truthful mechanisms which will guarantee that there will be no subjective assessments in the associate professorship juries and no nepotism in the selection, and that the jury members will be knowledgeable in their fields.

• Generally appointing an academician who has completed the doctorate degree as an assistant professor after a year, applying for associate professorship by making a study other than doctorate after having worked for 4-5 years will be a necessary step for an efficient academic life. However, some different practices related with the promotion periods can be implemented at newly founded universities and established universities.

• Letting the universities perform the professorship appointments with their own assessments will pose problematic situations along with its useful results. Among them are selecting the jury members mainly from the unit and not making an objective assessment in the selection of the jury members out of the unit. Consequently, appointments of professorship can be done by maintaining the current assessment process after getting the minimum conditions from the centre or, can be done by a central jury constituted from three professors selected by drawing from a list.