Academics
As of 2010, METU has approximately 23,000 students, of which 15,800 are enrolled in undergraduate programs, 4,500 in masters, and 2,700 in doctorate programs. A further 1,500 students are attending programs in the new Northern Cyprus Campus. Over 40% of METU's students go on to graduate school. Each academic year, METU hosts over 1,500 regular international students from nearly 80 different countries; and through 168 Erasmus Programme agreements and 182 bilateral exchange and cooperation agreements with universities abroad (e.g. in Central Asia, Middle East, North America, Australia, Far East and Pacific Region), it sends 350 students and receives 300 students and 50 researchers annually. As of 2010, the university employs 2,500 faculty (professors and associate professors), 500 academic instructors, and over 2,000 research assistants. The number of the alumni exceeds 500,000 (about 350,000 having completed undergraduate programs).
METU has about 40 undergraduate programs within the faculties of Engineering, Architecture, Arts and Sciences, Economic and Administrative Sciences, and Education, and there are 97 masters and 62 doctorate programs available in the graduate schools of Natural and Applied Sciences, Social Sciences, Informatics, Applied Mathematics, and Marine Sciences. METU commonly ranks close to the top among research universities in Turkey, with over one third of the 1,000 highest scoring students in the national university entrance examination choosing to enroll; and most of its departments accepting the top 1% of the nearly 1.5 million applicants. In the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities published in July 2009, aiming to measure through web-based publications the institution size, research output, and impact, METU ranked as the world’s 435th (1st place within Turkey) among 15,000 universities, being the only university from Turkey to get included among the top 500. Recently, the Times Higher Education World University Rankings published in September 2010 placed METU at the 183rd position worldwide based on indicators of teaching, research, influence, innovation, and international character, making it one of the two universities from Turkey listed among the top 200 (The other being Bilkent University at number 112). The QS World University Rankings 2010 by Quacquarelli Symonds ranked METU as 185th worldwide in the field of engineering and technology, and as 285th in the field of natural sciences.
The language of instruction at METU is English. All enrolled students are required to have a degree of proficiency in English for academic purposes, and this is assured by a proficiency examination before the commence of studies. Students with unsatisfactory knowledge of English follow a preparatory English education for one year, given by the METU School of Foreign Languages. Two exceptions instructed in Turkish are the Turkish language and the history of Turkish revolution courses mandated by the Council of Higher Education.
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“Almost all scholarly research carries practical and political implications. Better that we should spell these out ourselves than leave that task to people with a vested interest in stressing only some of the implications and falsifying others. The idea that academics should remain “above the fray” only gives ideologues license to misuse our work.”
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