Research Information System
YUKSEKOGRETIM DERGISI, no.1, pp.38-51, 2012 (ESCI)
Considering the very obvious fact that the world has entered a phase of "knowledge economy", and countries' future welfare will highly depend on their ability to create and apply knowledge, one can quite easily infer that policy issues regarding higher education systems will be at the heart of governments' agenda, so the diversity and diversification. The case of Turkish Higher Education System will not be an exception. This paper attempts to develop a basis for prospective diversity studies on Turkish Higher Education System. At first, a six step "Research Stream" was proposed along with a detailed literature review evaluating previous research studies on HESs' diversity. In the light of the structure of contemporary Turkish HES, key components (players) of the system were determined and system's conceptual framework was depicted assuming that HESs are complex adaptive systems. A comprehensive Dimension-Set for operationalization of diversity was then developed, reflecting inherent characteristics of and interactions between the components, at its widest possible extents. Data availability and/or data generation methods for each dimension were listed. The provided Dimension-Setand proposed "Research Stream" are deemed to foster prospective research studies on the diversity in Turkish HES.