The effect of Erasmus mobility program to the internationalisation of Turkish state universities: Akdeniz University example

Internationalization emerged with the mobility of capital and then gained power as a result of the positive contributions of "information" – the most important resource or capital of all ages – in education with respect to scientific field together with technological developments. With the internalization movement that became one of the indispensable facts of our age, the need for diversifying and widening the services delivered at the higher education institutions, where information is generated and presented, has arisen just like in all other institutions. Upon foundation of the Republic regime in Turkey, internalization started to emerge in higher education institutions with the recruitment of foreign faculty members and lecturers and then further accelerated with the transnational cooperation thanks to student exchange programs in mid-20th century and then with the participation in Bologna process at the beginning of 21st century causing great mobility with Erasmus exchange program as a part of this process. The Council of Higher Education of Turkey – the highest authority in Turkish higher education system – brought regulations, sanctions and laws and created the country-specific mobility programs with respect to the problems of quality and accreditation brought about by internalization activities. The objective of this thesis work is to examine the effect of student and staff mobility on students as it started to develop with EU member states within the scope of Erasmus mobility activities that hold an important place in the internalization process of Turkish state universities. For this purpose, quantitative and qualitative data analysis methods were used and a survey of 55 questions was prepared for the experience in student mobility and these surveys were sent by e-mail to students that originate from Akdeniz University – one of 13 state universities that started Erasmus mobility activities as pilot universities. The surveys that were answered by 133 students were statistically analyzed using SPSS. The findings show as a result of the analysis of data that among the students of Master's or PhD at Akdeniz University, the students at all degrees without an academic title (lecturer, researcher, expert) attached more significance to overseas experience gathered after the relevant mobility. The perception of foreign language improvement among students that studied in Western European countries was much higher than those that studied in other countries with respect to foreign language improvement. Keywords: Bologna Process, EU Education and Youth Programmes, Erasmus Mobility Program, Turkish State Universities, Internationalisation of Higher Education