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Struggles of Management Engineering Education in Turkey
VOL 25, NO. 2, SUMMER 2006
Struggles of Management
Engineering Education in Turkey
L. ÖZKALE
The emergence of management engineering in Turkey in 1977 offers an interesting example of interaction among society, industry, and academia. As the oldest technical university in Turkey and having contributed to the development of Turkey, Istanbul Technical University (ITU) has always provided a positive environment for the creation of new engineering fields. Despite this favorable atmosphere, the emergence and development of management engineering was not easily accepted by all. Beginning with ITU’s establishment, this article summarizes the history of the program, its curricular developments to address changing societal conditions and the demands of the labor market, and new challenges presented by integration into European higher education. The last curriculum change in 2003 is particularly emphasized, as it emerged during the self-evaluation period to obtain ABET equivalency. Results of two surveys explain the important place that engineers continue to occupy in managerial positions in Turkey and indicate a continuing need for management engineering education in Turkey. This article concludes with an analysis of the continuous quality improvement process undertaken by ITU’s Department of Management Engineering, which brought the realization that a curricular update served not only ABET substantial equivalency but also as preparation for the Bologna Process in which Turkey participates.
Establishing a New Field
Founded in 1773 mainly with the support of French engineers, the Engineering School of the Ottoman Empire (the original name of ITU) was based on the engineering education model of the French Grandes Ecoles, until German professors escaping the Second World War came to Turkey and ITU. The specific model adopted at this time was that of l’Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées, which had some of the best professors of economics in France. ITU followed this model by including among its faculty members Tevfik Bey, a professor of economics who was one of the last Finance Ministers of the Ottoman Empire.
At Istanbul Technical University, the emergence and development of management engineering was not easily accepted by all.
Prof. Nalbantoğlu, Professor of Economics and the founding dean of the Faculty of Management Engineering , was followed by Prof. Hatiboğlu, who worked on the legislation that established the Faculty and had been Prof. Nalbantoğlu’s assistant. While finishing his P.h.D at Istanbul University and serving as Prof. Nalbantoğlu’s assistant, Hatiboğlu went to Harvard Business School in 1954, sponsored by the Ford Foundation, where he found a completely different atmosphere for engineering [2]. For example, some courses in economics were taught in departments such as civil and mechanical engineering in ITU in the 1950s but were not considered an important component of the engineering curriculum. In contrast, more than half of the students at Harvard Business School graduated from engineering departments. Trying to implement a business school in an engineering university may have seemed strange, but ITU was graduating engineers holding a Master of Science degree who later occupied most of the CEO positions of big firms in Turkey.1 After his return, Hatiboğlu observed that Turkish firms were almost all directed by engineers.
In the 1960s, other professors of economics, management, and law joined the ITU Faculty of Civil Engineering where a chair of Business Law and Economics had existed since the times of Tevfik Bey. This Chair marked the beginnings of the department of Management Engineering, which in 1977 became the Faculty of Management Engineering. In 1982, the Turkish Higher Education Council (YOK) transformed it into the Faculty of Management, omitting “engineering” from the name to be consistent with a general YOK format established throughout the country. YOK then refused all subsequent proposals from higher education institutions to establish new management engineering departments.2 The existing department of Industrial Engineering was incorporated in the Faculty of Management, against the will of its professors, exacerbating tensions created by ongoing efforts to differentiate the curricular content of these two disciplines while securing ABET equivalency.3 The fundamental problem for management engineering became being recognized as an engineering discipline while differentiating itself from industrial engineering.
In 1977, the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering included such engineering departments as industrial engineering, naval architecture and marine engineering, aeronautics engineering, and mechanical engineering.4 In addition to becoming members of the Chamber of Mechanical Engineering after graduation, graduates also became members of the different engineering Chambers, giving them the right to formally approve engineering projects in two fields, as well as the opportunity for additional financial gain. This dual membership was particularly important for industrial engineers who were often considered “intruders” in a very conservative engineering milieu dominated by traditional engineering fields. They were regarded as having learned insufficient engineering content.
When management engineering education was first established at ITU in 1977, only three schools in the U.S. were offering it at the undergraduate level: North Dakota State University; Montana State University, as Industrial and Management Engineering; and Oklahoma State University, as Industrial Engineering and Management.5 Note that the titles reflect proximity but also a differentiation between industrial and management engineering. Apart from those three institutions, management engineering was largely taught at the master’s level in American universities, distinct from industrial engineering.
Considering that in Turkey, most of the engineers in management positions had very limited experience in production within their own specific field, the founders of the new program at ITU preferred to establish it at the undergraduate level for efficiency reasons. Observing that almost all top managers were graduated from engineering departments but occupied managerial positions, it was more efficient in terms of resource allocation to provide a new engineering department where management, economics, and law courses were included. The focus of the existing industrial engineering curriculum on production, and its lack of human studies, also played a role in the creation of management engineering.
The Department of Industrial Engineering found it threatening that a new engineering program so close to it was proposed, developed, and accepted by the University Senate. One significant difference between the two was the inclusion of the human sciences in management engineering. Also, because what we understand today as “soft skills” were not present in industrial engineering in 1977, the management engineering curriculum also differed by including them. Eventually, the management engineering program came to include six components, which are also Department divisions: 1) production and marketing, 2) management and organization, 3) quantitative methods, 4) economics, 5) accounting and finance, and 6) law.6 With the exception of the mathematics and basic science courses that all ITU students take in a larger pool, all management engineering courses are taught by faculty members in these divisions.7
While management engineering was growing, industrial engineering itself underwent a series of updates, moving from a focus on “productivity and efficiency of production and manufacturing systems” in the 1970s and early 1980s to an emphasis on “coordination between production and management” in the late 1980s and early 1990s and, finally, to “improving organizational performances” of both service and manufacturing organizations beginning in the late 1990s. At present, the industrial engineering curriculum is similar to those elsewhere in the world [5]. But in the process, the shift from an emphasis on manufacturing to human behavioral issues has made the industrial engineering curriculum approach the original management engineering curriculum.8
Evolution of the Program
Since 1977, updates in management engineering have moved it away from other fields of engineering and more toward business management. As a result of reduced engineering content, despite similar continuous quality improvement efforts undertaken in both departments, the Department of Industrial Engineering was able to obtain ABET-substantial equivalency in 2003 while the Department of Management Engineering did not.9 Management Engineering reacted by gathering together its advisory committees and deciding to further update its curriculum in order to rebuild the engineering content. The possibility of further reducing engineering content while still keeping “engineering” in the Department title was also seriously discussed.
Since 1977, updates in management engineering have moved it away from other fields of engineering and more toward business management.
The decision was made to maintain a significant level of engineering content since that is what made the program stand out. Graduating management engineers that were in high demand in the job market kept the program competitive. Indeed, twenty-five years after the establishment of the program, graduates of the Department had proven themselves very successful both inside and outside of Turkey Another key reason for keeping “engineering” in the title and upgrading the engineering content was the competition created when eight ITU departments received ABET substantial equivalency in 2003. Since management engineering was recruiting students from the same demographic pool as other ITU engineering departments, it too needed the recognition of ABET’s equivalency.
During these discussions, the Department conducted a survey of existing foreign programs in management engineering. The findings showed that although management engineering had not expanded in the U.S. at the undergraduate level but was developing rapidly in many European universities, even if under such different names as “ingénieur technico-commercial,” “business engineer,” or ”commercial engineer.”10 Importantly, however, one striking finding of this research was that management engineering has no single common curriculum. On the contrary, the existing programs vary considerably, reflecting a diversity of societal, industrial, and service-sector needs in the countries where they are offered.
To address the ABET concern about insufficient engineering content, the continuous quality improvement committees embarked on a very radical update of the program. This update was not an easy process. In particular, social science faculty resisted the decrease of social science content in the curriculum, arguing that such is what gave management engineering its “comparative advantage” among engineering programs. They also argued that receiving equivalency from ABET was unnecessary. But even this faculty group agreed that, ethically, the department could not claim to be producing engineers without increasing the engineering content; there might even be a legal requirement to do so. So the decision came down to going on with the degree and making the necessary adjustments in the curriculum or renouncing the engineering degree altogether and adopting a B.A. designation.
The decision was made to maintain a significant level of engineering content since that was what made the program stand out.
One determining factor in the final outcome proved to be the way ITU’s engineering departments recruit their students. In Turkey students are admitted to universities centrally, through a nationwide single-stage examination administered by the Student Selection and Placement Center (SSPC/OSYM). The existing rules of the entrance exam stipulate that high school graduates must make their choice of department following the pathway they chose in high school. Engineering departments thus recruit students from math and science backgrounds whereas departments of business administration and economics recruit those with a background in Turkish language and math. In order to continue attracting students with math and science backgrounds, the Department made the decision to reform the management engineering curriculum instead of opting for a program in management alone.
Changes in Curricula
The 1977 management engineering program placed a heavy load on the students, with a total of 196.5 credits comprised of 56 compulsory courses, five electives, and a graduation thesis. The distribution of credit hours included 23% in basic sciences, 22% in basic engineering, 17% in management engineering and design, and 38% in humanities and social sciences (see Table I). The structure included four hours of problem sessions for mathematics, four hours of technical drawing applications, one hour of laboratory for chemistry, and ten hours of supervised study for the graduation thesis. Finally, students were required to complete two compulsory summer internships, a technical internship to be completed in a factory after the fourth term, and a managerial internship to be completed in an industrial or service firm after the sixth term.
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Table I
Percentages of Different Course Categories in Management Engineering at ITU
Course classification according to ABET Curriculum in
1977 1996 since 2003
MBS= MATH&BASIC SCIENCES 23% 27% 22%
BE= BASIC ENGINEERING 22% 12% 20%
MED= MANAGEMENT ENGINEERING&DESIGN 17% 21% 25%
HSS= HUMANITIES&SOCIAL SCIENCES 38% 41% 33%
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This curriculum remained in place for almost a decade, with only minor changes thereafter. Although the program had its opponents in engineering, its graduates were in high demand. Employers were impressed with the analytical capacity of management engineers and their ability to link engineers together with the graduates of business administration, economics, and law. Management engineers quickly made their way into senior management positions.11
The curriculum presented by the Department when it was seeking ABET equivalency was the product of a general curriculum update of all ITU departments in 1996. In that update, the curricula of all ITU departments underwent significant change, consisting mainly of a 30% decrease in the total number of course credits and the introduction of English as a language of instruction.
Management engineering had already reduced its requirements in the 1980s to 136 credits. During the 1996 update, the total number of credits was increased again to 153 credits in order to include new requirements for Turkish language, Turkish history, and English. Compared with the original curriculum, the new one represented a 22% reduction in total credits [8]. The 1996 curriculum also reduced basic engineering courses to 12% of the total, increased the number of elective course hours to 26 credits, and increased the number of non-lecture credit hours to 20.
The 1996 curriculum was able to reduce the number of basic engineering courses because these were offered by other engineering faculties in the university, who did not participate in the curriculum reform process. The Management Engineering faculty judged that the basic engineering courses had less importance for management engineers than courses in law, economics, and different management fields.
However, when ABET equivalency was sought, this reduction had adverse consequences, and it was subsequently reversed. An additional change from this process was an increase in the number of design courses.
One striking finding of this research was that management engineering has no single common curriculum.
A survey of students proved to have significant implications for the curriculum. Responding to a question about their preferred industries for employment, 22% indicated a preference for information technologies, 21% for the textile industry, and 18% for the chemical-food-pharmaceutical sectors. Accordingly, in the most recent curriculum, students choose their four basic engineering courses as electives from a pool of six courses, organized according to industry sector. Students follow the same procedure in choosing three engineering electives in which technology courses related to those sectors are offered. Having this opportunity to select courses enables students to understand the engineering dimensions of the management issues they are likely to face in their industries of choice, as well as to learn how to integrate management systems into different technological environments.
In sum, the most recent curricula reform of 2003 increased the proportion of basic engineering course content from 12% to 20%, increased management engineering and design course content from 21% to 25%, and reduced humanities and social sciences content from 41% to 33%. See Table I for a summary.12 This program structure successfully satisfied ABET criteria for engineering management or similarly named programs.13
One can see from Table I that the 2003 curriculum restored the proportion of basic engineering courses to the 1977 level while increasing the proportion of management engineering and design courses. The main decrease was felt in the area of humanities and social sciences. Given the decrease in total credits from 196.5 to 153 credits, the five percentage-point drop from 1977 represents 3-4 courses. This is a significant reduction in the content of one category.
Recently, the Management Engineering department has sought to develop the expertise to teach its own technology courses. Indeed, faculty have been hired who are able to teach technology courses within the Department. However, most new faculty hired in the last two years prefer teaching and research in management-related areas. This behavior, preferring management-related areas to technical ones, mirrors the interests of engineers working in management positions at large firms in Turkey and in Europe.
Engineers as Managers
In Turkey, most of the chief executive officers (CEOs) of large firms have always had engineering backgrounds. For example, a 2004 survey by the Turkish newspaper Milliyet found that among the managers of 200 large firms in Turkey, 39 CEOs were graduated from Middle Eastern Technical University (METU), 32 from Istanbul University, 30 from ITU, 25 from Ankara University, 22 from Bogazici University, and 5 each from Yıldız Technical, Ege, Dokuz Eylül and Ankara Gazi University [10]. Although the departments of origin were not specified in the survey, one can reasonably assume that a large portion of the METU and ITU graduates hold bachelor degrees in engineering, given the dominance of engineering in these universities.
In order to learn more about engineers in senior management, in July 2005 I conducted a survey among the CEOs of the top 100 firms. I received 47 responses, among which 68% of the actual CEOs are graduates of engineering programs. The respondents include ten mechanical engineers, nine chemical engineers, three electrical engineers, three agricultural engineers, two metallurgical engineers, and two industrial engineers. Among those who do not have engineering backgrounds, the largest group consisted of economists, with seven, followed by management degree holders, with five. Graduating only in the last 23 years, management engineers appear not to have attained CEO positions in the top 100 firms despite having achieved high positions in smaller firms.
These figures do demonstrate that Turkey’s large firms are still managed primarily by engineers. It is also interesting to note that three of the seven holders of bachelor degrees in economics are CEOs of foreign firms, whereas two others are heading firms in one of the two biggest industrial groups. When firms of those two groups are further examined, one observes that they are increasingly managed by graduates from economics or business administration. This finding suggests a gradual movement by non-engineers into the high positions of management traditionally occupied by engineers, especially in foreign firms and large industrial groups adopting American-style organization. It is striking to observe a similar situation in continental Europe where big industrial firms have traditionally been managed mostly by engineers.14
Engineering Education, Quality Assurance, and Interactions with the World
The history of management engineering at ITU shows how a single program can reflect not only developments in that specific field but also the impacts of policy changes in the university, the country and the world. This program is also a good example of the positive influence of a structured, well-defined quality-assurance system that helps university programs redefine their objectives and outcomes in order to address the needs of the society.
The existing management engineering programs vary considerably, reflecting a diversity of societal, industrial, and service-sector needs in the countries in which they are offered.
Despite the non-compulsory character of accreditation from ABET, an outside agency, decisions to apply for it have had other benefits for Turkish higher education institutions. Since the 1999 Bologna Declaration, European higher education institutions have been moving toward a common program structure. In order to achieve a European Higher Education Area (EHEA) by 2010, European ministers and policymaker responsible for higher education have established milestones every two years. At their 2003 Berlin meeting, the Ministers asked education reformers to focus on three priorities: the degree system, quality assurance, and recognition of degrees and periods of study. Then at their 2005 meeting in Bergen, they stipulated that they were looking for progress in a) implementation of the standards and guidelines for quality assurance, b) implementation of national frameworks for qualifications, c) awarding and recognition of joint degrees, including at the doctorate level, and d) creating opportunities for flexible learning paths in higher education, including procedures for the recognition of prior learning” [12].
Although motivated by ABET equivalency, reform of the ITU management engineering program is helping this program align its quality assurance standards with EHEA requirements. For example, during a site visit to ITU in which the Management Engineering Department was one of three departments chosen for review, the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) committee found that the continuous quality improvement processes prepared for ABET equivalency also met the ECTS quality assurance approach as well.15 With examples such as these, we are now seeing concrete examples of the convergence of higher education systems around the world.
ABET Preparation Was Beneficial
Emulating first a French Grande Ecole and then business education at Harvard, eminent economic professors at ITU planted the seeds for what eventually became a unique program in management engineering in 1977. Tensions quickly developed with industrial engineering faculty who felt that their low status among engineering disciplines was further eroded with the emergence of management engineering. Faculties from both programs have spent three decades carefully drawing and maintaining boundaries around their disciplines. In the end, factors external to the university, including especially the desire for ABET equivalency, job preferences of students and graduates, and the curricular contents of similar programs in the U.S. and Europe, have helped maintain a differentiation between the two curricula. While striving to keep “engineering” in its name, management engineering nonetheless distinguished itself from industrial engineering through an emphasis on human sciences and soft skills. The possibility of reducing engineering content significantly and changing the program to a bachelor of arts in management was seriously discussed but abandoned, in recognition of the fact that a significant proportion of senior management positions in Turkish firms are held by engineers. All this took place during the period in which Turkey signed and ratified the Bologna Declaration, and all Turkish higher education institutions are now required to fulfill by 2010 the general obligations set by creation of the European Higher Education Area. ITU’s management engineering faculty have thus come to realize that preparing for ABET substantial equivalency has also paved the way for compliance with the Bologna Process.
Author Information
L. Özkale is with the Department of Management Engineering, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey. Email: ozkale@itu.edu.tr.
Acknowledgment
The author would like to acknowledge travel support from the U.S. National Science Foundation to the 2004 ASEE Annual Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, and to thank Juan Lucena and Gary Downey for valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper. The author also thanks all Turkish management engineers who have helped her with the survey on the top 100 Turkish firms’ CEO’s bachelor degrees.
References
[1] “Academic Units,” Istanbul Technical University, 2006; http://www.itu.edu.tr/e/ab-1.d4
[2] Z. Hatipoğlu, “Söyleşi: Dünden Bugüne İşletme Mühendisliği ve Türkiye” (Interview: Management Engineering and Turkey) 3Gen Dergisi, pp. 15-25, İlkbahar (Spring), 2002.
[3] I. Akduman, L. Özkale, and E. Ekinci, “Accreditation in Turkish Universities,” European J. Engineering Education, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 231-239, 2001.
[4] ABET, Accredited Engineering Programs, Apr. 17, 2006; http://www.abet.org/accrediteac.asp
[5] ITU Department of Industrial Engineering Self-Study Report for ABET Accreditation, 2002.
[6] International Symposium on
Management Engineering 2006, Third Announcement; http://www.f.waseda.jp/watada/Conference/ISME2006web/index.htm.
[7] International Master in Management Science, Solvay Business School, Brussels, Belgium; http://www.solvay.edu/EN/Programmes/MasterInternational/Objectifs.php
[8] ITU Department of Management Engineering Self-Study Report for ABET Accreditation, 2002.
[9] ABET, Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs- Effective for Evaluations During the 2004-2005 Accreditation Cycle, 2003, p. .9; www.abet.org.
[10] Milliyet, “ODTÜ ve İstanbul yabancılarla yarışıyor” ( METU and İstanbul competing with foreign institutions) Milliyet Business, İstanbul, Turkey, Aug. 2, 2004.
[11] “T.I.M.E. program : Top Industrial Managers for Europe,” École Centrale Paris; http://www.ecp.fr/en/D_international/D2_reseaux_internationaux/D2a_time.htm.
[12] Bergen Communiqué, The European Higher Education Area- Achieving the Goals,presented at Conf. of European Ministers Responisible for Higher Education, Bergen, Norway, May 19-20, 2005.
[13] Draft ECTS site visit report of ITU, 2005.
FOOTNOTES:
1Leaving the German model behind, the division of the “High Engineer” degree (holding M.Sc.) into undergraduate and post-graduate master and doctoral degrees took place only in 1971.
2As the highest accreditation board, YOK has the authority to approve or reject the establishment of new departments or programs. YOK’s accreditation is completed prior to establishment and thus differs completely from ABET-type accreditation.
3A thorough explanation of the functioning mechanism of YOK can be found in [3].
4As a technical university, ITU has not more than one engineering faculty, each comprising engineering departments in related fields. For example, the Faculty of Electrical end Electronic Engineering gathers together the departments of electrical engineering, electronic engineering, and telecommunication engineering [1].
5Although these titles include the name “Industrial,” actually they are accredited according to the engineering management program criteria of ABET (together with 8 others) and not the program criteria for industrial engineering [4].
6The structure of the department is established by the regulations of the Higher Education Board of Turkey.
7In addition to the undergraduate management engineering program, the department offers five degrees at the master’s and doctoral levels, as well as double-diploma programs with the State University of New York in Economics and Business Administration.
8Tensions between industrial and management engineering education have been played out not only at ITU but also on an international level. For example, the Management Engineering Research Group, which sponsors the International Symposium for Management Engineering, states that “management engineering was renamed from Industrial Engineering where the strength is placed on management as well as production in the industrial engineering. Originally industrial engineering was a research area where the effective and efficient production was to be realized in factories or production. Therefore, time study, human factors, scheduling, human studies were included in the area. Recently, the effectiveness and efficiency of management are more required in the strongly competitive world. The Management Engineering is also strengthened on new methodologies including artificial intelligence, soft-computing as well as management science and operations researches” [6].
9ABET does not accredit at the international level, but provides only substantial equivalency which is similar to accreditation of the American institutions.
10 “Economy as foundation, technology as added value and entrepreneurship as guideline” is in short the philosophy behind the Belgian title of Business Engineer (Ingénieur de gestion, sometimes also translated as management engineer or “Commercial Engineer”; see the web site of Solvay Business School [7].
11Actually, 23 years after the first graduation, there are many CEOs and CFOs working in Turkish big firms and multinationals operating in and out of Turkey in different fields and positions of industry (electronics, automotive, textile, consumer apparel, food, etc.) and different divisions of the service sector (banking, insurance, financial auditing, etc.) as well as in research departments of those sectors.
12For comparison, the course categories are determined according to ABET terminology for the three different curricula although another internal terminology was used in ITU before ABET accreditation.
13The program must demonstrate that graduates have: an understanding of the engineering relationships between the management tasks of planning, organization, leadership, control, and the human element in production, research, and service organizations; an understanding of and dealing with the stochastic nature of management systems. They must also be capable of demonstrating the integration of management systems into a series of different technological environments [9].
14For example, Top Industrial Managers for Europe (TIME), the most prestigious technical universities network in Europe, was founded to provide double diploma opportunities to the students of its members which are all among the top technical universities of different European countries and graduating mostly engineers. Having 44 technical and technological universities as members (including ITU), TIME wants to provide double diplomas from two different institutions in two different countries to the graduates who work at top managerial positions of big European firms [11].
15The ECTS Counsellors wrote in their report that “the currently available content, specially at the course level, is very impressive, a consequence of the quality assurance and accreditation procedures of the university. The important issues of describing programmes and courses by learning outcomes and providing a clear description of teaching methods, which are normally a difficulty institutions face, are very well handled at ITU. The counsellors believe that the efforts made by ITU in the quality assurance area converge naturally with the efforts directed at improving the quality of ECTS practices” [13].
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