Response of Higher Education to Vulnerabilities: Syrian Refugees and Turkish Higher Education

Higher education in the 21st century was transformed from elite to mass, from being “ivory towers” to having more relations with society. Public responsibility role, added to intellectual and educational functions of teaching and research needs to be defined more clearly to respond the newly evoking social challenges, such as migration and vulnerabilities. This presentation will focus on Syrian refugees in Turkish higher education system, based on a field research conducted on Syrian university students and academics in Turkey. The starting point has been to understand the profiles, needs and expectations of both Syrian students and academics in Turkish higher education system, as Turkey is the country hosting the most refugees (4 million from Syria and another 400 thousand from other countries) in the world. Initial findings of our research indicate that higher education systems need to adapt new roles and qualifications in order to understand, to help and to integrate diverse student populations as active citizens.