The "Research and Candidate Research Universities" determined within the scope of the "Specialization and Mission Differentiation Project" brought into the higher education system by the "New Higher Education Council" were announced by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the 2017-2018 Academic Year Opening Ceremony held at the Presidential Complex on September 26, 2017. .
The performances of our universities, which started to work within the scope of the project, are monitored annually within the framework of the criteria determined by the "Monitoring and Evaluation Commission" established within the Council of Higher Education. In this context, the evaluation results of the 2017 and 2018 data of 11 Research and 5 Candidate Research Universities included in the project were shared with the public last year.
- 2019 performances were evaluated within the scope of 32 indicators under 3 headings.
Research Universities Performance Monitoring Index studies for 2019 were completed in cooperation with TÜBİTAK, and Research and Candidate Research Universities were evaluated within the scope of 32 indicators under the titles of "Research Capacity", "Research Quality" and "Interaction and Cooperation" and a ranking was made accordingly.
In the first dimension, "Research Capacity" is evaluated; The number of scientific publications in the university, the number of citations, the number of national projects, the amount of funds obtained from national projects, the amount of international project funding, the number of national and international patent applications, the number of national patent documents, the number of international patent documents, the number of utility models / industrial design documents , the number of doctoral graduates and the number of doctoral students” were examined.
In the second dimension, "Research Quality"; “The rate of scientific publications in the 50% tranche in Incites journal impact value, the rate of scientific publications in the 10% tranche in Incites journal impact value, the number of national science awards, the number of faculty member companies, the number of student/graduate companies, YÖK 100/2000 Ph.D. Number of Scholarship Program students, number of TÜBİTAK 2244 Industry Doctorate Program students, amount of funds received within the scope of TÜBİTAK 1004 Technology Platform Project, open access percentage of scientific publications, open access percentage of theses, number of entering the top 500 in world academic general success rankings and number of accredited programs ” indicators are taken into account.
In the third dimension, which is handled as “Interaction and Cooperation”; “University-university collaboration publication rate, university-industry collaboration publication rate, international collaborative publication rate, number of university-industry collaboration patent documents, international collaborative patent document number, the amount of funds received from university-industry collaborative R&D and innovation projects within the scope of public funds. The ratio of the amount of funds received from contracted university-industry cooperation R&D and innovation projects to the number of related projects, the ratio of international students, the ratio of international faculty members and the number of faculty members/student in circulation” were taken into consideration.
- Ranking of Research and Candidate Research Universities was made
The details of the 2019 total scores of our Research and Candidate Research Universities, which emerged as a result of the evaluations made within the scope of the index created, and their rankings made accordingly are as follows:
- Performance comparison of 3 years was also done
The performance comparison of our Research and Candidate Research Universities by years is as follows:
- Additional budget allocation to the universities in the top five
As a result of the evaluation, the top 5 universities with the highest performance in 2019 were determined as Middle East Technical University, Istanbul Technical University, Boğaziçi University, İzmir Institute of Technology and Ankara University, respectively.
Additional budget allocations were made by the Presidency's Strategy and Budget Department for these Research Universities, which are among the top 5 in the ranking made according to their performance in 2019.
- Five universities rose in the rankings
When the performance evaluation results of 2019 are examined, it has been seen that "Istanbul Technical, Ankara, Ege, Bursa Uludağ and Çukurova Universities" among the universities within the scope of the program have increased in the ranking compared to the previous year. It is noteworthy that three of these five universities (Ege, Bursa Uludağ and Çukurova Universities) that have made a rise in the ranking are Candidate Research universities. This development shows that the project continues successfully in line with its objectives.
- “Label change” will be made in 2021
It was announced while the project was being introduced to the public that the title of "research university" for 11 universities determined within the scope of the project would not be a label to be carried to the end. While reports on the performance of research universities are shared with the public every year, according to these results, some universities;
(a) It may lose its status as a research university due to its poor performance,
(b) A process was designed in which he could be promoted to a Research University due to his outstanding performances while he was a candidate research university.
In this scenario, there will be no increase in the number of research universities and candidate research universities, and there will be new universities that maintain their current position, lose it, or rise to the lost positions.
In this context, the “label change” to be made by considering the performances of our Research and Candidate Research Universities will be carried out in 2021 after the completion of the 2020 performance evaluation. As a result of the evaluations to be made, there may be mutual transition situations between our Research and Candidate Research Universities.
- “Transparent, accountable and competitive processes” for quality in higher education
“As the new YÖK, we believe that quality in higher education will develop in transparent, accountable and competitive processes. Our aim in sharing the "Annual Performance Report of Research and Candidate Research Universities" with the public, as well as the "Foundation Higher Education Institutions Report, University Monitoring and Evaluation General Report" that we announce every year, is to provide access to data on the development of our higher education system.
The Specialization and Mission Differentiation Project has the biggest role in achieving the aim of diversity brought to the Turkish higher education system by the “New Higher Education Council”. The biggest factor in the success of this project has been determined as “transparency”. Sharing all data with the public in an analytical manner results in universities competing with each other in a competitive environment based on academic outputs.
As the "New YÖK", we believe that "transparency" and "competition" are very important for the contribution of higher education to the development of our country and to science. As the Council of Higher Education, we congratulate all our universities whose performance has increased and wish them continued success…