Private universities charge up to $35,000 for PhD

ISTANBUL

While the fees requested by foundation universities for graduate programs can reach up to 680,000 Turkish Liras ($36,000), this figure exceeds 800,000 liras ($42,500) for foreign students in some universities.

State universities do not charge fees other than secondary and distance education for master and doctorate programs, whereas foundation universities are not affordable for a large part of the society.

In fact, the fees for graduate programs at Istanbul’s Yeditepe University start from 24,000 liras per semester, and for doctoral programs, it ranges between 32,000-85,000 liras per semester. In other words, in some departments, a student has to pay 680,000 liras for a four-year doctorate, even if there is no raise for four years.

For foreign students, the fees reach even more astronomical levels. Özyeğin, another university in Istanbul, requests an annual fee of 70,000 liras for architecture doctorate program from Turkish students and $11,550 dollars, or 217,000 liras, from foreign nationals.

In the absence of any increase in fees, the figure goes up to 280,000 liras for Turkish students and 868,000 liras for foreigners.

The public law doctorate program, concordantly, costs 145,000 liras for Turks and $30,000 for international students, or 563,700 liras.

While the master’s fee at Istanbul’s Acıbadem University is between 30,000 liras and 140,000 liras, it goes up to 100,000 liras for the doctorate. For foreign students, the master’s fee is between $5,000 and $25,000, or 93,950 liras and 469,750 liras, while PhD costs between $15,000 and $40,000, that is, 281,850 liras and 751,600 liras.

Meanwhile, it is getting harder to find researchers for universities in Türkiye. Though the Council of Higher Education (YÖK) took action to meet the need for human resources with doctorate degrees and offered PhD scholarships in 100 thematic fields at state universities, the number of new doctoral enrollments does not exceed 20,000 annually.

According to the latest data on postgraduate education, the country lagged behind the OECD average. While the OECD average in the number of people with master’s and doctorate degrees was 13.9 and 1.3, respectively, these rates were 1.7 and 0.5 in Türkiye.