Is Erdogan Destroying Turkish Universities?

An article by Andrew Wilks in The National claims that the position of Turkish universities in the Times Higher Education (THE) world rankings, especially that of Middle East Technical University (METU) has been declining as a result of the crackdown by president Erdogan following the unsuccessful coup of July 2016.

He claims that Turkish universities are now sliding down the international rankings and that this is because of the decline of academic freedom, the dismissal or emigration of many academics and a decline in its academic reputation.

'Turkish universities were once seen as a benchmark of the country’s progress, steadily climbing international rankings to compete with the world’s elite.

But since the introduction of emergency powers following a failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in July 2016, the government’s grip on academic freedom has tightened.

A slide in the nation's academic reputation is now indisputable. Three years ago, six Turkish institutions [actually five] were in the Times Higher Education’s global top 300. Ankara's Middle East Technical University was ranked 85th. Now, with Oxford and Cambridge leading the standings, no Turkish university sits in the top 300.

Experts say at least part of the reason is that since the coup attempt more than 5,800 academics have been dismissed from their jobs. Mr Erdogan has also increased his leeway in selecting university rectors.

Gulcin Ozkan, formerly of Middle East Technical University but now teaching economics at York University in Britain, said the wave of dismissals and arrests has "forced some of the best brains out of the country".'

I have no great regard for Erdogan but in this case he is entirely innocent.

There has been a massive decline in METU's position in the THE rankings since 2014 but that is entirely the fault of THE's methodology. 

In the world rankings of 2014-15, published in 2014, METU was 85th in the world, with a whopping score of 92.0 for citations, which carries an official weighting of 30%. That score was the result of METU's participation in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project which produces papers with hundreds or thousands of authors and hundreds and thousands of citations. In 2014 THE counted every single contributor as receiving all of the citations. Added to this was a regional modification that boosted the scores of universities located in countries with a low citations impact score.

In 2015, THE revamped its methodology by not counting the citations to these mega-papers and by applying the regional modification to only half of the research impact score.

As a result, in the 2015-16 rankings METU crashed to the 501-600 band, with a score for citations of only 28.8. Other Turkish universities had also been involved in the LHC project and benefited from the citations bonus and they too plummeted. There was now only one Turkish university in the THE top 300.

The exalted position of METU in the THE 2014-15 rankings was the result of THE's odd methodology and its spectacular tumble was the result of changing that methodology. In other popular rankings METU seems to be slipping a bit but it never goes as high as in THE in 2014 or as low as in 2015

In the QS world rankings for 2014-15 METU was in the 401-410 band and by 2017-18 it had fallen to  471-480 in 2017

The Russian Round University Rankings have it 375 in 2014 and 407 in 407. The US News Best Global Universities placed it 314th last year.

Erdogan had nothing to do with it.