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[Introduction to North Cyprus] North Cyprus Universities [Complaints and Feedback page] |
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Article received by email from Mr. David Christie- This article was originally submitted for inclusion to Dave's ESL web site: - Introduction I was recently employed as Head of an English Language Foundation programme at the European University of Lefke in North Cyprus. While my own teaching operation was generally well staffed, equipped and administered, I was genuinely dismayed by the incompetence and general lack of professionalism I encountered in other departments of EUL. In posting this article, it is my sincere hope that it might serve as a caveat to any EFL instructor/lecturer actively considering a teaching position with this establishment. Background For a country less than a third the size of the Falklands and with about as many inhabitants as Newcastle, the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus boasts an impressive number of universities: five in all with another opening this year. But appearances are deceptive. As far as the TRNC is concerned, this apparent love of learning turns out to be little more than charade. For despite their respectable exterior, most of the universities here are very much money-making concerns. True, the façades may look a tad more respectable, but like the other two big crowd pullers in the breakaway north – gambling and prostitution – their main function is to help keep the economy afloat. But if universities in TRNC are there to generate income rather than ideas, they also perform a useful secondary function as clearing houses for the Turkish Higher Education System. Each year in September, thousands of school-leavers who fail to qualify for universities on the mainland, head south to North Cyprus where they are practically guaranteed a place. As a result, academic standards on the island are, on the whole, extremely low. The TRNC - as any Turk will tell you - is no destination for serious students. European University of Lefke Of the five universities in the region, the European University of Lefke (EUL) is one of the most remote and least impressive. A small-scale institution situated at the north-westernmost tip of the TRNC, the EUL operates on a semi-private basis with generous funding from the Turkish vakif foundation. Nevertheless, despite the considerable subsidies they receive and the ever-growing demand for ‘easy degrees’, the reputation of this university is such that it still struggles to attract more than a few hundred students per year. Students at EUL are a mixed bag of the disadvantaged and the disinterested. Many of the male students are draft dodgers or are simply there to kill time for one reason or another. Lacking the basic academic and linguistic skills required to follow the degree programmes - which local law decrees must be taught in English - all that is demanded or expected of students is that they show up, pay up and ultimately shut up. Indeed, 'registration leads to graduation' might well be the university motto, if ever they perceived the need for such a thing. The sad truth, however, is that apart from the degree which just about everyone gets, EUL students appear to receive precious little in return for the time and money they spend here. For in terms of teaching and syllabus, EUL falls well short of even the lowest of standards which any self-respecting European university might aspire to. Although fully accredited by the Turkish Higher Education Council (YÖK), recent checks on EUL faculty members have revealed more than a few dodgy doctorates and Mickey Mouse Masters. The MSc which one former senior lecturer claimed to have obtained from a prestigious UK university turned out to be little more than a School Leavers' Certificate. Of the handful of faculty members who were asked to leave last year, more than one had quite simply ‘invented’ their qualifications, including doctorates. Nor are the academic staff averse to a bit of good old-fashioned plagiarism. A former Head of Department saw nothing wrong in lifting whole articles from sources as diverse as the Psychiatric Times and Dave’s ESL Café and submitting them as original pieces to the university newspaper. In a final tour de force, he cut and pasted the contents of five American PhD theses, had them published in book form under his own name and placed on the shelves of the university shop, which of course says as much about the man’s personal hubris as it does about EUL’s shocking disregard for professional integrity (not to mention intellectual copyright). The English Preparatory School is another cause for concern. Having once chaired a selection panel for new EFL instructors, I was appalled to see just how little care is taken to ensure that incoming students receive quality language tuition. On the contrary, the policy of employing former TRNC graduates with minimal language ability, and virtually no real teaching experience, practically ensures that new students leave the Prep School without being able to function in English. Despite choosing to reject all but one of the applicants on that occasion, I was genuinely shocked to see that almost all were subsequently offered teaching positions at the school. In light of the above, it is therefore not surprising perhaps that teaching in the faculties at EUL consists for the main part of three-hour lectures, most of which are delivered entirely in Turkish. Some lecturers struggle to lecture in English, but in most cases end up translating for the benefit of the students. On practically every count, the EUL fails to meet the basic minimum standards and requirements of a proper university. Virtually none of the academic staff at EUL is actively engaged in research and the impressive library building remains to all intents and purposes an empty shell. The absence of a proper book collection or even decent reference materials must surely make a mockery of EUL’s self-proclaimed goal of ‘maintaining and developing international standards of excellence’. But if EUL has little interest in providing quality education, then it has virtually no intention of providing the support facilities and student welfare it so prominently advertises in its marketing materials e.g. the 24-hour free internet access, the 'planned' swimming pool, the 'home-from-home environment' etc. etc. On the contrary, from the day they arrive, students are very much left to fend for themselves. In the absence of any real foresight or planning, new arrivals often find themselves wandering in the streets and surrounding countryside in search of accommodation. Foreign students are particularly at risk and some find themselves being discriminated against. More distressingly, alleged cases of bullying and physical assault by Turkish students seem to have been hushed up or simply not investigated. Practically all of the foreign students I came to know during my year at EUL felt they had been deceived in one way or another and many felt that even the high school education they had received in their own countries had been as good if not better than what was on offer at Lefke. I resigned in June of last year in protest at the shocking levels of incompetence and dishonesty which I encountered during the year I spent there. Sadly, from what I have heard in the last nine months, and despite the articles which have appeared in the Times Higher Education Supplement, there would seem to have been little change. What is even more distressing is that none of the UK universities from which Lefke is actively seeking accreditation /validation, and whose names have so ruthlessly been exploited in EUL recruitment materials seem to be unduly concerned. The letters I wrote to them last summer were not even acknowledged. David Christie Al Ain, March 2005 |
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