An Analysis of the New Regulations Introduced with Higher Education Personnel Law No. 7100 from the Perspective of Faculty Members

This study aims to find out the faculty member opinions regarding the new regulations introduced with the Higher Education Law No. 7100. It employs the phenomenological design, which is a qualitative research design. The study group consists of 44 faculty members who voluntarily participated in the research. The faculty members' opinions were collected using a form that included standardized open-ended interview questions, which were then interpreted through content analysis. The results show that although academics have positive opinions about the new academic promotion system, they find the new regulations relatively inadequate. The participants making positive comments on the new regulations think that the new academic titles have international equivalence, differences between the titles are considered, and what these titles entail is made clearer thanks to these regulations. The participants who assert negative opinions about the regulations, on the other hand, think that these changes fail to bring a satisfactory improvement since they have simply changed instructors' titles, and even caused a loss of status for them. Therefore, they argue that such a change was not necessary. While the participants consider the granting of associate professorship title by the Interuniversity Board (UAK) without performing an oral exam as a positive development, they are mostly negative about the university tenure granting policies for the holders of this title.