Programmes without professors or associate professors: What kind of academia is this?

Mustafa Kömüş

The quality of universities in the country has been criticised for a long time. However, these criticisms, ranging from the budget to the quality of education and the transformation of academic staff, have fallen on deaf ears. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of students are still dreaming of attending university.

The application process, which began on 1 August, will end on 13 August. During this process, students will apply to the departments of their dreams. So, what is the state of academia? The guide published by the Measurement, Selection and Placement Centre (ÖSYM) gives us some insight into this issue. According to the guide, 1,278 undergraduate departments at public universities do not have a professor, and 990 departments do not have an associate professor. In 400 departments, there are no professors or associate professors.

NOT A SINGLE PROFESSOR

Among the departments without professors, there are some notable ones. In departments such as medicine, law, dentistry, nursing, computer engineering, psychology, social services, and software engineering, some universities have no professors. Similarly, in some of the artificial intelligence departments recently praised by the Higher Education Council (YÖK), there is not a single professor.

There is a university without professors in the medical faculty, which is one of the departments that students most want to enter each semester. Trabzon University, which has 60 places allocated, has no professors or associate professors. There are zero professors in the law faculties of Afyon Kocatepe, Çankırı Karatekin, and İnönü Universities. Additionally, there is only one professor in the law faculties of Boğaziçi, Bolu Abant, Eskişehir Osmangazi, Gaziantep, İzmir Demokrasi, Pamukkale, Sakarya, and Tokat Gaziosmanpaşa Universities.

One of the most notable departments without professors is dentistry. There are no professors in the dentistry faculties of Batman, Bingöl, Hatay Mustafa Kemal, Iğdır, Nevşehir Hacı Bektaş, Niğde Ömer Halisdemir, and Van Yüzüncü Yıl universities. There is only one professor at the faculties of health sciences at Afyonkarahisar, Aksaray, Çankırı, Erzincan, Giresun, Karabük, Karamanoğlu Mehmet Bey, Kütahya Health Sciences, Muğla Sıtkı Koçman, Pamukkale, Sakarya and Yozgat Bozok universities.

BRING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE INTO THE CLASSROOM!

The artificial intelligence departments that YÖK has recently boasted about opening are in the same situation. There are no professors in 16 of the universities' Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Data Engineering, and Artificial Intelligence Engineering departments. In some of these, there are no associate professors either.

Similarly, the piloting department, which is among the most popular departments in recent times and is only offered at Eskisehir Technical University in the public sector, is in the same situation. There are no professors or associate professors in the department.

Engineering departments that have fallen out of favour in recent years are not much different. There are no professors in over 200 engineering departments.

ENGINEERING ERROR

There are no professors in 19 of the most popular engineering departments, namely software engineering. In computer engineering, there are 35 universities with no professors.

Another notable department is health management. Out of 60 universities with health management departments, 25 have no professors. In other words, 4.1% of health management departments have no professors. The social services department is in an even worse state. Out of 58 universities with this department, 29 have no professors. In other words, one out of every two social work departments lack a professor. The data for nursing and psychology departments also drew attention. Out of 117 nursing departments, 32 lack professors, while 34 out of 62 psychology departments also lack professors.

Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Profesörsüz, doçentsiz programlar: Bu nasıl akademi, published in BirGün newspaper on August 4, 2025.