Present Status of Geophysics Departments at Universities in Turkey from Perspectives of their Students

Abstract

This survey was conducted in order to make the students who are having geophysical engineering education in Turkey evaluate their departments from their own perspectives.By doing this we aimed to make a contribution to the geophysical engineering education and we tried to find out if there were any deficiencies in that matter and also the possible solutions.In this respect aproximately 500 undergraduates from 11 different state universities were asked 25 questions regarding both their socio-economic status and their ideas on their future professions.In the survey the students were asked to state their high-school graduation;whether it is an Anatolian High-school,Vocational high-school or college and if geophysical engineering education was their first choice at the university entrance exams.The students’ foreign language status-if there were any- except their mother tongue were asked and also their opinions on geophysical education at their universities.Besides these the students were asked in which fields they study in their department; Seismology, Geophysics or Applied Geophysics and if they found the geophysical equipments adequate in their departments and also the programming languages-like data processing laboratories.In the survey we tried to find out if the students were encouraged to participate in the meetings and congresses in their field by their instructers and if they found the theoretical training adequate besides the practical one.Above all the students answered questions if they had any worries about future job opportunities ; what their goals were after they graduate and if they could easily get access to any kind of Turkish sources in their field and if they were reluctant to work at any jobs part-time or full-time during university.The results of the survey were presented to the Union of Turkish Engineers and Architects and also to the related heads of departments.The most striking parts of this survey were that the students were not edequate enough to interpret and analyse the foreign articles and journeys because of their poor foreign language levels and % 80,5 were very anxious to get a proper job in the future and %78,6 did not find the sources edequate in Turkish and %91,8 of these students thought that theoratical training was not enough besides practical one.