Technology transfer through the movement of people: The case of the 1933 university reform

In 1933, the newly established Turkish Republic set out to reform its tertiary education institutions in an event that would come to be known as the University Reform. This period coincided with the rise of National Socialism in Germany, which displaced many valuable German-speaking scholars, a great number of whom moved to Turkey as refugees and took part in the Turkish university reform. The refugee scholars specialized in a vast array of fields including economics, medicine, natural sciences, social sciences, law, and the arts. Through their stay, they laid out the foundations for modern, Western-style university education in Turkey. This thesis examines the 1933 University Reform in Turkey in the context of a massive technology transfer event facilitated via the movement of people. It offers that the 1933 University reform utilized the refugees' human capital as agents and catalysts of technological change, which resulted in the introduction and adaptation of new methodologies, accumulation in the educational knowledge base, and endowed the Turkish university with the ability to indigenously reproduce the transferred values. To arrive at this conclusion, the thesis details the contributions of the refugee scholars within their given fields, examines the development of these fields and their education in Turkey as instigated by these contributions, and altogether evaluates the effects of the emigration on Turkish higher education.