Özet:
Turkish university students’ opportunities for studying abroad were quite
restricted prior to the ERASMUS Student Exchange Programme. The
implementation of the programme has rapidly changed this situation and significant
numbers of students have had the chance to go overseas to live and to learn in
universities outside of Turkey. As a result, Turkish universities have felt it necessary
to incorporate the equivalent of the classes that students take abroad into their
programmes. This situation, an important step in the internationalization of
universities, is very new for Turkish universities and the students enrolled in them.
This paper looks at the effects of the programme on 44 Turkish students in Germany
via the ERASMUS Student Exchange Programme, the sample data being collected
by qualitative methods at three stages. The study establishes what kind of changes
have occurred in the students’ perspectives, in their assessment of events, and in the
long-term outlook of their education and professional future. In this frame, it also
establishes their perspectives from before joining the programme and during the
time they were abroad, which resources they used to access knowledge, the
problems they faced and their solutions, how they assess the ERASMUS Programme
as well as living abroad and the university in which they enrolled, as students for a
certain time naturally assessed their European study by comparing the university and
educational system with that in their home country. The study also investigates to
what extent the aims of the ERASMUS Programme have been achieved, which
could be summarised as increasing the quality of higher education and strengthening
the European dimension in Turkish universities.
