Research University Initiative: From Perspective of Educational Administrators in the Universities

Date

2019-10-08

Author

Kondakçı, Yaşar

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The debates about world-class universities (WCU) have become popular in recent years. When looked at the discussions on the world class universities, it can be argued that the description of WCU is a complicated one. The descripti-ons regarding what constitutes WCU are incompatible with each other (Kirby & Joycelyn, 2015). Salmi (2009) recommended a comprehensive framework for de-fining what constitutes a WCU. Salmi recommends three core elements of WCU or research university: (a) a high concentration of talent (students and scholars in the institutions), (b) offering abundant resources and good conditions for aca-demics to conduct leading research, (c) favorable governance features that foster vision, technology transfer, and academic freedom and that enable the universi-ties to take autonomy and to distribute resources without bureaucratic actions (p.7). According to Salmi & Liu (2011), countries follow three basic strategies to establish WCU, which are selecting the potential universities to upgrade them, merging existing universities and opening new universities to establish world-c-lass or research universities.In line with this purpose, the transformation of universities in Turkey into world class universities has been planned through Research University Initiative which aims to upgrade the existing public universities selected on the basis of their research performance and focus. As a result of the investigations based on self-evaluation report, 10 research universities were selected by the Council of Higher Education (YÖK). The effort to create research universities attract the at-tention of higher education researchers in particular. The study aims at investiga-ting middle and top level administrators’ perceptions of the process and potential outcomes of Research University Initiative in Turkey under structural, human resources, political and symbolic frames of Bolman & Deal (2008) for change. The research question guided in the study is: How do educational administrators in the selected research universities perceive the process of Research University Initiative?The outcomes of the study contribute to the existing knowledgebase through revealing how the process of establishing research universities shapes the opini-ons of those who are possibly affected by the change. The study was designed as a phenomenological study. The participants were determined with the criteri-on sampling method which is one of the purposeful sampling methods. In this study, the participants are academicians who previously had/have middle and/or top level administrative positions at the selected universities. The semi-structu-red interview was used to collect the data. The interview form containing 14 qu-estions was developed by the researchers through analyzing the related literature.The preliminary results of perceptions of educational administrators regar-ding the initiative have presented five themes that are also in line with the litera-ture: structural, human resources, political, symbolic and technological dimen-sions. The results of the study show that educational administrators in research universities have limited information and documentation on this initiative. They underline the government has not launched any document related to rules and regulations about research universities. Other developments such as rector appo-intment, associative professor criteria, research grants, etc. in the regulations and initiatives by YÖK do not seem compatible with the process. Moreover, they give point to lack of favorable policy environment and public initiative and support. It can be said that most of the participants find the effort to create a research university valuable and meaningful, they criticize the cooperation between po-licy makers and the actors of the universities. In sum, the Turkish WCU lacks necessary structure, human resource, political and cultural bases, which makes the Turkish WCU initiative highly futile when compared to other counterparts around the globe.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/77856

Conference Name

4. Uluslararası Yükseköğretim Çalışmaları Konferansı

Collections

Department of Educational Sciences, Conference / Seminar

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Citation Formats

Y. Kondakçı, “Research University Initiative: From Perspective of Educational Administrators in the Universities,” presented at the 4. Uluslararası Yükseköğretim Çalışmaları Konferansı, Çanakkale, Türkiye, 2019, Accessed: 00, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/77856.