The future of political science and public administration departments: policy recommendations for shifting demands

Deficit and excess are highly relevant concepts for problem definition stage of policy analysis. In water management, scarcity of water cause drought and abundance of water results in flooding problems. Likewise, high demand for certain departments is a problem for the candidates and the low demand is a problem for the relevant departments and universities. Especially at a time when successive governments invested heavily for higher education, declining demand for higher education is both a problem for the academy itself and a public finance issue, due to sunk costs and ineffective and inefficient use of public funds. In fact, sharp drops in enrolment rates is a serious problem for a number of Turkish universities. Although well-established universities do not face a serious problem concerning their enrolment rates, recent additions to Turkish public universities and universities established by foundations struggle to attract student for their certain programmes, like economics, business administration, political science and public administration, labour economics and industrial relations, international relations and econometrics. In this study, performance of Public Administration and Political Science and Public Administration Departments in Turkey was analysed historically with reference to number of departments, student enrolment numbers and rates to identify possible reasons behind declining student demand. In the study, figures concerning the number of departments, quotas and enrolment numbers and rates and the changes in student numbers between the year 2002 and 2018, was analysed with reference to the Measurement Selection and Placement Centre (？SYM) data. Initial findings of the study identifies a persistent rise in the number of departments, department quotas and number of students enrolled until 2012. In fact, higher education and diplomas have been highly valued and desired objectives for a majority of people in Turkey. Successive governments invested in higher education to meet this demand. This has been especially the case in the 2000’s in which number of higher education institutions have proliferated in both public universities and higher education institutions established by foundations. Furthermore, new departments and programmes established, along with sharp rises in quotas of already existing departments and programmes, resulted in a “higher education boom” in Turkey. Turkey outnumbered some well-developed OECD member countries concerning its achievements in gross and net enrolment rates. In doing so, certain programmes in Schools of