An investigation on the official approach to unemployment and the transformation of the universities according to the human capital theory

Having price stability as its main goal to be achieved, mainstream neo-liberal economic theory legitimizes unemployment on the premise that a certain level of unemployment is a functional tool in the fight against inflation. Unemployment problem in Turkey has been based on reasons such as agricultural abandonment, low savings, demographic problems, wrong policies of past periods, low level of development, the abundance of unpaid family workers, inefficiency in agricultural production, increase in public deficits, and economic crises since the First Development Plan. With the transition to the new liberal order in the post-1980 period, the official perspective on unemployment began to change in line with the new liberal theory, and unemployment began to be seen as a problem resulting from the lack of human capital. Therefore, the approach that the solution to the unemployment problem is through the increase of human capital has begun to be widely accepted, and all policies to combat unemployment have been formed according to this approach. In this context, policies such as unemployment insurance, vocational training courses, on-the-job training programs, community work programme and entrepreneurship training program have been implemented and continue to be implemented in the fight against unemployment. These policies, the main purpose of which is to make the market to function, lead to the restriction of the social rights of the workers, and in this way, a low-qualified, insecure, and low-paid workforce pool is created. Since the Third Development Plan of Turkey, a policy has been pursued to adapt the education system as a whole and university education to the needs of the market. Policies to transform the education system have also been formed and implemented entirely according to the neoliberal human capital theory. This dissertation examines the results of the transformation of university education and the expansion of universities in Turkey. The main conclusion the dissertation reached as follow: the policy of adapting the university to the requirements of the market has led to an increase in the unemployment rate among university graduates and as a consequence of the commercialization of the university, the poor has began to be excluded from university education.