Robert Kolej'de Öğrenim Gören Türk Öğrenciler Üzerine Prosopografik Bir Çalışma (1863-1971)

Abstract

The subject of thesis is examining Turkish students who studied in Robert College, opened in a faraway country by United States, between the years of 1863 and 1971, as a group. The objective of thesis is revealing the group movement of these students who constitute a well-defined group and their contributions to Ottoman and Republic communities in which they were residing. Primarily archive documents comprised of student files and graduate registries are used in the study. Information compiled from documents are entered to a dedicatedly developed database called PROSOPO. A huge database is constituted by storing 52.310 documents belonging to 5.120 students in total and queries are performed in this database.

System analysis is made within the scope of prosopography method which intends to examine common past of a group of actors who lived in history and in our case, this group is composed of Turkish students who studied in Robert College. In the system approach where the College is handled as a whole Ottoman and Republic communities, students, College education, graduates and relatives of graduates constituted environment, inputs, transaction process, outputs and feedback process respectively and all together they formed the components of system. The results obtained via comparing inputs and outputs of system are explained in terms of transaction process and environmental conditions.

Results obtained are these: Even though the number of students enrolled in the College, i.e. number of inputs is too much, number of graduates, i.e. number of outputs is too few. While only 1.09% of Turkish students who were included in the system in Ottoman period were graduated, only 14.16% of the ones were graduated in Republic period. This numerical divide between the students and graduates was explained to a great extent with heavy and strict College education which constituted the transaction process of system. Being opened as a missionary school and continuing education with the same unbending discipline is an educational value of College to which it is tightly adhered from the beginning till the end. Students who couldn’t keep in step with this education and who failed to comply with the values have been taken out of the system. Another explanation is the political, social and cultural experiences of transition process from Ottoman period, an empire, to Republic period, a nation state.

Modern and quality education provided by Robert College and educational principles based on free thought and development of personalities and self-reliance of students led to a limited number of but high-quality graduates. These graduates have served Ottoman and Republic communities by performing high level professions and breaking new grounds in their fields.

The College has been an educational institution where predominantly students from upper classes are studied and where these groups reproduced themselves but even to a lesser extent, it gave the opportunity to students from lower intermediate and lower social classes to move up.

The College was an international institution in Ottoman period but following the regulations regarding foreign schools in Republic period it gained a national identity and became an institution of the Republic. Then it was converted into Boğaziçi (Bosphorus) University in 1971.