The main aim of this chapter is not only to examine and discuss Turkey's recent higher education potential, and its framework for human capital in the context of economic and geopolitical standpoints of Eurasia, but also to provide a clear picture and lasting impact on a significant scale of this potential in a systematic and holistic way at a glance. This main aim includes the following sub-goals, which outline the framework of the research, examine the internationalization process of higher education system of Turkey, provide a specific picture about the general situation of higher education not only in Turkey but also the world by using basic current higher education indicators in numbers, graphs, and tables, provide a basic information on the concept of internationalization of higher education as well as the reasons behind. Qualitative method is conducted so as to accomplish these goals. The data of certain official institutions were used, the charts created based on these numbers in order to visualize the concept of the study and to make it more comprehensible and concrete.
TopIntroduction
In the background section, an outline of Turkey's geopolitical position in the Eurasian region and the reflection of the Turkey’s cultural accumulation in higher education in parallel with the development and growth of Turkey will be exemplified. The concept of internationalization of higher education and its place in Turkey's Higher Education Strategy, international student circulation and importance of it, why Turkey attaches importance to this issue will be outlined based on the extant literature.
The first part of the main section will focus on the fundamental context of the progression of opening higher education system of Turkey to foreign students (the internationalization process of higher education system of Turkey): The Bologna Process and the European Higher Education Area; accreditation; the quality issues; opening, executing and managing jointly established universities and higher education activities with Germany, France, Japan, America and some Eurasian countries; short term student mobility programs (Farabi, Mevlana, and Erasmus).
The second part of the main section will focus on numbers to provide a specific picture about the general situation of higher education both in Turkey and Turkey’s position in the world. By means of graphs and tables, the sub-topics below will be analyzed annually and their changes in number will be discussed. This part mainly emphasizes the following:
A general situation of higher education in Turkey in numbers based on university, faculty, college, technical college, institute, research and application center, department, divine, program and their number of units,
The number of students enrolled at higher education of Turkey during the 2016-17 academic year,
The number of students receiving higher education in the world,
The number of international tertiary students in the world,
Annual total number of international tertiary students in the world between 1999 and 2015,
The percentage of international tertiary students in the total number of students,
Top 20 countries with the most tertiary students studying abroad based on 2016 data,
Annual total number of Turkey’s tertiary students studying abroad between 1999 and 2016,
Top 25 countries with the most inbound tertiary students,
Annual total number of Turkey’s inbound international tertiary students between 1999 and 2015, the number of foreign students enrolled at higher education of Turkey by gender and degrees in 2016-17 academic year,
Top 25 countries with the most tertiary students studying in Turkey.
The main aim of this study is not only to examine and discuss Turkey’s recent higher education potential for human capital of Eurasia, but also to provide a comprehensive picture of this potential in a systematic and holistic way according to real data. To achieve this goal, the following sub-goals, which form the main outline of the study, are determined;
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To provide a basic information not only on the concept of internationalization of higher education but also on the reasons behind Turkey’s enthusiasm and basic challenges on attracting international students to Turkey, importance and contribution of foreign students in Turkey to their home countries’ development in economy, culture, policy, environment, society as well as Eurasia and the world in general.
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To examine the fundamental framework of the process of opening higher education system of Turkey to foreign students, in other words, the recent internationalization process of higher education system of Turkey.
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To discover and analyze basic current higher education indicators such as the number of universities, tertiary and international tertiary students both in Turkey and in the world at a glance, and the changes in these indicators annually by means of numbers, graphs and tables based on the data of the concerned official institutions of Turkey and other international bodies- so that a specific picture about the general situation of higher education not only in Turkey but also the world can be provided.