Turkish Higher Education System Reform

In order to deeply understand the main reason of this research, we aim to clarify moreabout Turkish Higher Education System. All of the Higher Education Institutions requiresstudents to take Student Selection and Replacement exam (OSS). OSS has been used inTurkey since1974, but fundamentally has had some changes by so far. The test wasseparated into two parts in1981as OSS and OYS. Student Selection examination (OSS)and Student Internships Examination (OYS). In1999, those two types of exam werereplaced with the previous one again. Currently, College Entrance Examination includes(YGSοHigher Education Entrance Examination and (LYS) Undergraduate Placement Test.YGS is the first part of the exam which is required to be taken by students. Turkish HigherEducation system is divided to three different types; Full-time Education, Half-timeEducation and Distance Education. In Distance Education system, students study moreindependently so that the tuition amount is lower. There are some similarities existing inFull-time and Half-time Education system, however there is still a big difference betweenthe tuition amounts that they need to pay.Along with the increasing number of university students, Turkish Higher Educationtuitions have increased almost every year. First, tuitions had increased about7%in2008-2009, and then it increased8%again in2009-2010. After the continuous tuitionincrease of last two years. Tuition amounts still remained in2010-2011. Then HigherEducation Committee, under discussion with the President, prepared the tuition reformwhose aim was reducing the tuition amounts.With the changes in the economic development of the country, Higher EducationCommission-Y approved the reform which is based on the idea of receiving collegetuition from the government. Full-time undergraduate, graduate students would not have topay any tuition start from2012. As to distance education, the government also stoppedreceiving their co pay. The main purpose of this research is to express how this reformaffected college students, their families and the country. Besides, referring to Asian andEuropean countries’ higher education and college tuition system, it’s aimed to compare thehigher education tuition policies of those countries.