Abstract:

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the Hacettepe University, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences final year students’ opinions on how much they achieved the competences stated in the Turkish Qualifications Framework for Higher Education (TQF) for lifelong learning, which was approved on January 2010 by The Council for Higher Education General Assembly. In order to collect the data a questionnaire was developed and administered to determine the opinions of the students about their competences for the undergraduate level descriptors in TQF that is part of the Bologna Process.
The population of the study consisted of 932 final year students of Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences (which has eight deparments) in the academic year of 2010/2011. For this study each and every member of the population was included. Data was gathered with the TQF undergraduate level competences questionnaire arranged for four different sub-dimensions: “working independently and taking responsibility”, “learning competences”, “communication and social competences” and “specific and vocational competences”. The data was classified according to gender, departments, parents’ education level, family income level of students and teaching methods often used in learning process and each one of them was used an independence variable.
In the research, theoretically defined questions tested by confirmatory factor analysis. The data was coded and interpreted by univariate analyses methods according to the research problem. Some of the findings are:

1- Faculty students rated themselves on achieved competences on a “high” level.
2- With the specific and vocational competences, female students think that they pay more attention to the social, scientific, ethical values than male students and they feel that they are more sensitive to the social rights than male students.
3- When the students have more lectures in their study program, they feel more competent in “working independently and taking responsibility”, “learning competences” and “specific and vocational competences” dimensions of Turkish Qualifications Framework.
4- When the opportunities of the placements for internship and practices are increased in the students’ study program, students think that their competences are more developed in the field of “specific and vocational competences” dimension of Turkish Qualifications Framework.

It is recommended that the questionnaire can be applied in the larger and international samples and the faculty can modernize its course programmes according to the current developments in the global university education trends and increase the cooperation with the world of work.

Keywords:

Competences, Bologna Process, Qualifications, Turkish Qualifications Framework for Higher Education.