THE DEVELOPMENT AND EMPLOYMENT STATUS OF SPORTS MANAGEMENT CAREER AND THE CASE OF TURKEY

Sport management as a young academic discipline experienced remarkable development throughout the world. This improvement has enhanced the need of sport management professionals, and career positions of sport management has received much interest. Therefore, universities have attempted to develop sport management curricula at the undergraduate and graduate levels in order to meet the needs of professionals who are specifically trained in sport management discipline (Tripathi, 2013). In recent years, the number of institutions of higher education in sport management has grown around the world. As a young academic discipline, this remarkable development throughout the world has not been without challenges, problems and controversies (Jones, Brooks, & Mak, 2008). One of the most recently perceived and stated concern is that there are excessive numbers of sport management graduates, which limit employment opportunities. In this regard, aims of this study were to: (1) Provide an overview of the development of sport management programs throughout the world and in Turkey, (2) provide a descriptive critique of sport management graduates' employment status and graduate's employment perceptions in Turkey. For this purpose, a comprehensive literature review was performed with regard to the development and employment status of sports management discipline