Local governments serve to meet the needs of a local society, whose decision mechanisms are selected directly by the public regardless of a central management structure. It can be defined as a democratic and self-governing unit of management and public organization model.
Our department aims to train individuals who have extensive knowledge in the topics of political science, law, public administration, urbanization and environmental problems. Another pivotal aim of the program is to equip our learners with theoretical and practical knowledge and skills that they can transfer to real-life so that they can work as intermediate staff, lower and middle level managers especially for local administration (special provincial administration and municipalities). Additionally, another goal is to train individuals who will serve to help bodies of local administration work more efficiently and productively. To realize these aims, Department of Local Governments was founded at Devrek Vocational School as part of Bülent Ecevit University.
In addition to the aims mentioned above, the program also strives to train prospective administrators, who have a good grasp of the foundational principles, strategies and techniques of contemporary local administration and possess problem-solving and decision making skills. The program prioritizes meeting the needs of a qualified staff in public institutions (especially bodies of local management) and private sector institutions. At the same time, to find solutions for the administrative problems of the region and provide the students with the opportunity to be educated on this topic is at the core of the program.
Across the world and also in Turkey, the importance of local administration has increased substantially not only due to the globalization, but also to the “localization” in line with the European Union process and the localization of Turkey’s public administration. In parallel with these developments, since a great amount of public services were transferred to local administrations, the need for training lower and middle level work force has scaled up highly. It is without saying that both civil society organizations and local administration units have an invaluable role in national and regional development as a result of globalization and other political evidences. Besides, it becomes an indispensable need to give importance to these topics in the process of Turkey’s preparations for EU membership. In this context, therefore, Local Governments Program serves an important purpose of building technical and academic substructure in this field.
QUALIFICATION AWARDED
Graduates of the program are awarded the title of “Local Administration Staff”. They can work in public institutes and institutions (especially municipalities and special provincial administration).
LEVEL OF QUALIFICATION
Associate degree
ADMISSION REQUIREMENTS
Those students who would like to prefer Local Governments Program need to get the desired score from the verbal test in OSYM exam.
PROGRAM PROFILE
The program includes both day-time and evening education, both of which have 60-student capacity.
EMPLOYMENT PROFILES OF GRADUATES
Local Governments Program has the objective of supporting the development of democratic, transparent and participatory administrations, providing education for an effective presentation of public services and accelerating regional developments by institutionalizing local and decentralized governments across the nation. The program includes a wide range of courses such as basic economics, law, accounting, business administration, foreign language, computer, and statistics in addition to such professional courses as urbanization, political science, local governments and public finance. The curriculum of the program is designed in a way to further the decentralized government units, do justice for local administrations and train prospective public administrators.
ACCESS TO FURTHER STUDIES
Those students who complete the Local Governments program successfully can transfer to such undergraduate programs as public administration and political science among many other similar programs by taking the DGS exam conducted by OSYM.
EXAMINATION REGULATIONS, ASSESSMENT AND GRADING
Assessment includes at least one mid-term and one final exam for every course. Depending on the course, the instructor can choose to require from students such activities and tasks as quizzes, projects, case studies, etc. At the beginning of the term, he/she announces the assessment criteria. Mid-term exam has 40% proportion in the final grade of students whereas final exam has 60%. In order to be counted as successful in a course, the students need to get at least CC from the course.
GRADUATION REQUIREMENTS
The program includes both day-time and evening education, both of which comprise 2 year study and are conducted in Turkish as the medium of instruction. The students can graduate from the program provided they have 120 ECTS credits from the total of must and elective courses at the end of the 4th semester and complete the 30 day summer practicum.
MODE OF STUDY (FULL-TIME, E- LEARNING)
Full-time