Waqf and higher education: Contemporary experiences of Waqf Universities in Turkey.

Higher Education in Turkey, before the Higher Education Reform in 1981, it was consisted of five different institutions. These are, universities; Academies attached to the Ministry of Education; with two-years vocational High Schools which most of them are affiliated to the Ministry of Education and some of them to the other Ministries. The Higher Education Council (YÖK), besides many head of departments and coordination units, there is a "Waqf Higher Education Institutions Coordination Unit" in relations with Waqf universities and Waqf Higher Education, which executes their establishment process, actions related to demand changes on establishment commitments. For the sake of dissemination of scientific freedom with an incredibly fast at a breakthrough performance within a short period of 10 years time 71 new waqf universities were established by the government which has offered the fastest growing waqf universities opportunities in Turkish history and therefore it reached to 76 by 2014. For this, in terms of organizational goals, it can be seen that there are four types of waqf universities. First, waqf universities established by companies for the sake of profit or commercial purposes such as Koç and Sabanci which accept students with high fees; secondly, universities which was established by semi-government agencies like Diyanet Foundation such as Istanbul 29 May, Fatih Sultan Mehmet; thirdly, also semi-government agencies universities established by the chamber of commerce such as Konya Karatay, Istanbul Trade, and TOBB universities; lastly, pure private waqf universities established by social waqfs like Dissemination of Knowledge Society (Ïlim Yayma Vakfi) such as Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University (IZU). This paper, therefore, tries to elaborate the Waqf University models as well as their ccontemporary experiences in Turkey