2022
There are national reforms concerning higher education this year
2021
There are no national reforms concerning higher education this year.
2020
Autonomy for Higher Education Institutions in Program Development
Council of Higher Education has provided autonomy for decision taking concerning the programs of the universities, which includes the establishment of the "Advisory Board for Higher Education Programs and Quality Board of Higher Education". The incentive behind this approach of CoHE is to lead universities to "improve and strengthen institutional capacity"; to this end, universities are expected to invest in human resources, research, educational studies as well as administrative legislations and provisions. This new approach of CoHE is therefore prescribed as the delegation of authority and sharing of authority, the results of which are expected to increase the autonomy of the tertiary institutions in decision making processes concerning education, research and innovation.
Initial studies concerning the undergraduate teacher education programs affiliated to faculties of education can be traced back to the first extensive reform initiatives carried out in 1997-1998 within the framework of the Project of Improving the MoNE, and these studies were extended in further modifications in 2006 and 2009. In 2018 update, the courses in teacher education programs were defined, similar to the previous classification, under three categories as Field Courses 45-50%, Teaching Profession Courses 30-35%, and General Culture Courses 15-20%. The latest approach and thus the philosophy toward teacher education is that CoHE aspires tertiary programs, faculties of education in particular, to develop and administer their own programs by referring to the Teaching Profession Competencies framework of MoNE, to the legislations and regulations concerned.
Within this perspective, General Council of the CoHe, in the conference meeting dated 10/08/2020 decided on the following issues concerning development, improvement and administering of teacher education programs in faculties of education:
a) The categorizations of the courses are to be Field Courses, Teaching Profession Courses, and General Culture Courses.
b) This categorization is to be taken into account in defining the course numbers, course hours and credits as well