University ombudsman system and its application in Turkey: A model proposal

Although the university ombudsman has been implemented in the world for more than 50 years, it is not implemented in our country except Altinbas University, which is a foundation university, and all of the current complaints are received by the Ombudsman Institution (OI). It is understood that the decisions made by the Ombudsman Institution with a central understanding cover a narrow area and offer standard solutions. In addition, it is seen that university ombudsman is needed in order to solve the problems in universities where academic, administrative and student communities come together more quickly, practically and without going to the judiciary. The subject of the research is to investigate the applicability of the university ombudsman system in Turkey in the light of the sample country practices selected as a result of certain criteria. The aim of the research is to reveal the systematic benefits of the university ombudsman to be established in Turkey, to analyze the selected examples from the world theoretically, to make an applicability analysis and to offer a suggestion. In this context, using the qualitative research approach, the features of the ombudsman office of Washington University in the USA and the ombudsman office of the Sydney University of Technology in Australia were compared, and by considering the general ombudsman system in these countries and in our country, a suggestion was developed for the university ombudsman system that could be applied in Turkey. As a result, the model of "The Establishment of the University Ombudsman within the University depending on the Higher Education Council" has been suggested as the most appropriate model. Keywords: Ombudsman, Ombudsman Institution, University Ombudsman, Washington University Ombudsman, University of Technology Sydney Ombudsman.