The transformation of higher education by means of Techno-Parks: case of Turkey

Abstract

This study aims to explore the transformation of the universities by means of the techno-parks in Turkey. To conduct a critical phenomenological analysis, the study is divided two different parts in which the first part generates a perspective from outside by analyzing critically related documents about the reasons behind the transformation of the higher education and the development of the techno-parks. The university-industry-government partnership, which forces to make changes in the universities and “human capital,” is studied together with the science and technology policies and national strategies, which are taken into consideration with the arrangements and mechanisms in the techno-parks at the universities. The second part, as a case study, explores a perspective from inside by asking personal experiences and perceptions of the participants related to the same questions of the first part, which are the reasons behind the transformation of the higher education and the development of the techno-parks. The segregation in terms of gender, the implications of science and technology policies, and spatial redevelopment, which generate exacerbation of economic and spatial inequality, and political transformation, were critically analyzed by the data collected from the participants of the focus group. Exacerbation of economic and spatial inequality was analyzed together with economic and political transformation by questioning commercialization, marketization, commodification, managerialism, massification, privatization, internalization, rationalization, vocationalization, liberalization, revaluation, devaluation, reterritorialization, and entrepreneurialization of the higher education. After analyzing the related documents about the reasons behind the transformation of higher education it is so clear that the reasons are not only national, but also supranational where innovation and knowledge are taken as drivers of the competitiveness and growth. The transformation in the higher education is seen as the marketization of the universities by means of generating technological knowledge, which is commodified in the global market economy so that the integration of the universities has been enforced by the government and by the private industry. The benefits are mainly taken by the political stakeholders and private sector because the unemployment rate and the country’s current account deficit can be decreased, while the competitiveness in the knowledge economy is increased. The effects of the techno-parks are serious on the academic missions of universities, while changing innovation system so that the missions of universities are re-defined. Hence, knowledge as a commodity can be sold in the market and techno-parks and universities have become the headquarters of corporations. The analyses show that as a phenomenon, universities are not capable of absorbing the increasing demand so that techno-parks open new liberalization in commodification of knowledge. In order to make all these changes. The transformation towards entrepreneurialization has profoundly produced different problems-inequalities, segregation, and social injustices.