What Do the Names of Higher Education Institutions in Turkey and the UK Imply?

Abstract

Higher education is a growing field in which universities pursue better worldwide reputations. Although academic success is doubtless the most crucial element of a university’s quality and worldwide image, university names also influence universities’ functions and reputations.

This article is based on a project named “World Higher Education Institutions Name Map” at Social Sciences University of Ankara, Center for Higher Education Research. The project was primarily inspired by curiosity about which motives have influenced higher education institutions as they choose their names and whether it could be possible to detect any country-based tendencies in these choices. The data were gathered relying primarily on information elicited from the official websites of various countries’ higher education institutions. This article will focus on preliminary findings based on the data and will provide a comparative analysis of the names of higher education institutions in Turkey and the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom has been chosen because it has several long-established universities and is one of the leading countries in the field of higher education. Turkey has been included because it has a variety of higher education institutions ranging from the old to the very recent.