Examination the Academicians’ Opinions on Academic Freedom in the Turkish Higher Education System in Terms of Some Variables

The aim of this study is to examine the opinions of academicians working in the higher education system in Turkey about academic freedom according to demographic variables. For this purpose, it has been investigated whether there is a significant difference in the teaching, research, and publication subdimensions at the implementation level of the Academic Freedom Scale according to gender, administrative duty, age, seniority, year of duty, appellation, and faculty variables. This study has been conducted in descriptive survey model which is a quantitative research technique. The working group of this study consisted of 311 academicians working in Karamanoğlu Mehmetbey University, Aydın Adnan Menderes University and Kütahya Dumlupınar University in 2022-2023 education and training year. The data were collected with the personal information form containing demographic information and the Academic Freedom Scale consisting of 27 items. The data analysis was done with SPSS testing techniques which includes independent samples T-test and one-way ANOVA. Findings indicated that there was no significant difference between gender, age, faculty variables and the subcategories of academic freedom -teaching, research, and publication. On the other hand, the results show that academicians at the research sub-dimension have significance difference according to their seniority and administrative duty. At the same time, significance difference was seen in terms of office and appellation variables in teaching, research, and publication subdimensions. In line with these results, various studies can be carried out to create culture and raise awareness about academic freedom.