EFFECTS OF THE ERASMUS PROGRAMME ON TURKISH

Abstract

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.