TÜSİAD: “We attach importance to university autonomy enhancing features of the new higher education law draft"

Prof. Dr. Gökhan Çetinsaya, President of the Council of Higher Education (YÖK) visited headquarters of TÜSİAD on November 19th, 2012. Following the exchange of views on the New Higher Education Law Draft, TÜSİAD made the following statement:

“In order to raise the educational standards to the international levels, to produce universal knowledge and to educate the human resource able to adapt to a highly competitive environment, the higher education systems are in a process of restructuring.

It is a known fact that the Higher Education Law regulating the system in our country has an overly centralized approach. Our universities have actually diversified in parallel with the global trends in higher education, and to manage them with the current law has become harder in the recent period.

To adapt to the global trends, the universities must have a strong management and an ability to proceed flexibly. Our higher education system can gain an important momentum from a decentralized system design, enhancing institutional creativities and identities, flexible in responding to the problems encountered and allowing the universities to compete with each other.

In this respect, the preparation of a new law draft and its opening to the public discussion by the YÖK General Assembly is highly appraised. The law draft indicates that the principles of “academic and scientific liberty, institutional autonomy, diversity, transparency, competitiveness and quality” are targeted.

We attach importance to university autonomy enhancing features of the new Higher Education Law Draft. However there are also certain issues in various articles of the law draft, which may become an obstacle in the implementation of the mentioned principles. The revision of such articles during the ongoing process of consultation will be useful. The coherence between the fundamental principles emphasizing autonomy and diversity and other articles of the law will be restored in this way.

Certain propositions of TÜSİAD to make the structure of our higher education system autonomous and participatory, have been shared with Prof. Dr. Gökhan Çetinsaya, President of the Higher Education Board, and his staff. An outline of these propositions is as follows:

·    TYK (The Council of Higher Education of Turkey) should function as a coordination body.
·    All the stakeholders including the business world should be represented in the TYK General Assembly
·    The universities should enjoy a real autonomy in the decisions about their internal affairs conforming to the national strategy and vision.
·    University Councils should be constituted by external stakeholders close to the universities (such as former faculty members, administrators and management staff, alumni, etc.)
·    Universities should be audited by independent auditing firms, and independent quality assurance systems should be implemented.

YÖK has launched a comprehensive process of exchange of view about the law draft with the stakeholders. We hope that as a result of this process, a legal framework to strengthen the universities with respect to autonomy, accountability, diversity and quality will be achieved.