Higher education official proposes an alternative to the university entrance exam. 

(English summary follows)

Radikal'dan: ÖSYM Başkanı Prof. Dr. Yarımağan, üniversiteye giriş için tek sınav yerine 12 temel dersten birer sınav yapılmasını önerdi. Üniversitelerin hangi ders sınavından öğrenci alacağına kendilerinin karar vermesi gerektiğini söyledi... Ortaöğretimi bitiren öğrenci sayısında hızlı artış var ama yükseköğretim kontenjanlarında hiç yükselme yok. Türkiye, her yere sınavla girilen ve sadece çoktan seçmeli sınav yapan tek ülke kaldı.

Haberin devamı: Radikal-çevrimiçi / Türkiye / ÖSS yerine 12 dersten sınav

The President of the Center for Student Selection and Placement (ÖSYM), under the administration of the Turkish Board of Higher Education, has proposed an alternative to the notorious universal university entrance exam, the ÖSS.

The proposal is to do away with the ÖSS, and instead institute yearly comprehensive exams. Universities would have the choice of which subject exams to use in their accepance criteria. For example, a university's construction engineering program may use the scores from physics, Turkish, and mathematics for selecting students. Exams will include a variety of question types, even (gasp!) open ended questions.

I've written previously about this exam (most recently here), a 195-minute multiple choice exam that decides everything about a student's eligibility for state universities and majors. Teenagers' lives revolve around test preparation (even in their high school classes). Since the high school-age population continues to grow, but the number of university slots continues to stay the same, the exam is competitive in the extreme. Sad, since the exam is good for little more than measuring students' ability to take tests.

Doing away with the ÖSS is a step in the right direction, but replacing it with multiple annual exams for twelve years could be a step back, since we can safely assume that classroom education will still be focused on exam performance.  It looks like another step toward European harmonization is the testing to death of students before they get into university.