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Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) has issued a
17-point Beijing Declaration on Mooc Development and has
formed a 20-member Global Mooc Alliance with overseas
institutions such as Cornell University, the University of
Toronto and the University of Auckland.
The revival of the Mooc in Asia seems to have been
spurred by the need to support institutions without capa-
bility to develop their own online classes. Miao Fengchun,
chief of Unesco’s unit for technology and artificial intel-
ligence in education, said at the Tsinghua conference, that
2020 may mark the “real year of the Mooc” because of the
much higher level of usage.
A Unesco report, based on surveys in 150 nations from
June to October, shows that 90 percent of governments
facilitate or subsidise online learning, mostly through mo- President Erdoğan: twitter qualification partiality
bile phone access. “The courses provided by governmental
agencies to support online learning, by nature, are mas- plete power to appoint university heads into the hands of
sive open online courses,” Miao told Times Higher Educa- Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, replacing a
tion. According to Miao, several new trends have emerged: system in which academics played at least a partial role in
governments are “becoming a major player” in Moocs; the electing their rectors.
languages used are being “significantly diversified” away The academy points to one particular study that has gar-
from English dominance; and Moocs have moved beyond nered attention in Turkey. It found that almost a quarter of
higher education. rectors do not have a single published article in the Scopus
Mainland China has an Internet penetration rate of 65 database of research literature. In addition, 72 of Turkey’s
percent, according to a 2020 report by the China Internet 197 rectors have an h-index of zero. The h-index is a metric
Network Information Center. That puts it ahead of develop- of scholarly influence that measures both papers published
ing nations like India — where it is about 50 percent — but and how often they are cited. But what these rectors lack in
behind high-tech societies such as Japan, South Korea, Tai- research prowess, they make up for on Twitter.
wan, Hong Kong and Singapore, where it is 85 to 95 per- There is a correlation between weak research record and
cent. Moreover, while top institutions like Tsinghua were social media activity, and more than three-quarters of rec-
able to shift huge numbers of courses online last year, this tors with an h-index of zero were tweeting more than 100
may not be true of all of China’s more than 1,200 universi- times a day when the study was conducted last year.
ties, particularly those in outlying provinces. “The content of these posts includes their visits, hos-
Qiu Yong, Tsinghua’s president, says that the pandemic pitality services to government members and others, and
“empowered Moocs and online education to have a large- activities with associations close to government, as a means
scale, well-organised and all-round system application to promote the university,” reported the paper ‘Academic
worldwide for the first time, which truly becomes a new (dis)qualifications of Turkish rectors: their career paths,
form of education”. h-index, and the number of articles and citations’, pub-
lished in the journal Higher Education. “These posts also
TURKEY contained statements showing their support and loyalty to
Political rectors the government and to President R. Tayyip Erdoğan, who
appointed them as rectors.”
DOZENS OF TURKISH UNIVERSITY RECTORS These rectors are from leading universities that lag be-
have no international research record but tweet hind in international rankings and measures of research
prolifically in support of the Ankara government, prowess, found the study, authored by Engin Karadağ, pro-
scholars have warned, raising further concerns about aca- fessor of education at Akdeniz University.
demic independence as the country has moved towards In one controversial appointment, made after the study
autocracy. was carried out, Necdet Ünüvar, a former MP for the ruling
In its annual review of academic freedom, Turkey’s Sci- Justice and Development Party (AKP) was made rector of
ence Academy, a breakaway group formed in response to Ankara University. Although he does have a background
perceived government influence over the country’s estab- in medical research, some of his statements as rector have
lished academy, pointed to a flurry of news reports rais- been stridently nationalistic.
ing questions about the academic qualifications of some
rectors. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education and
This follows a 2018 legal change that transferred com- The Economist)
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