Higher education expansion is a crucial global phenomenon that has influenced education systems worldwide, affecting both developed and developing countries. Scholarly literature draws attention to the political, economic, and societal drivers of higher education expansion, highlighting its benefits, such as personal and professional development, improved opportunities, upward social mobility, and enhanced civic engagement (Jerrim & Vignoles, 2015; Marginson, 2016b; Msigwa, 2016). At national level, the expansion of higher education contributes to economic growth, lower crime rates, an improved economy, and a more democratic society (O’Sullivan et al., 2017; Lochner, 2020 Schwartzman, 2004; Schendel & McCowan, 2016).

Türkiye, despite initially lagging with a higher education attainment rate of only 13% compared to the OECD average of 30% (Kavak, 2011), has undergone rapid higher education expansion (Marginson, 2016). This growth was driven by a young and increasing population and a failure of the system to respond to the growing demand for higher education during the 1990s. The pressing need pushed the government to introduce a policy of expansion in 2006, promising at least one university in each city that became a catalyst for higher education expansion in Türkiye. Additionally, the government enacted other policies, that prioritized quantitative growth, such as increasing quotas in existing departments, supporting the establishment of new foundation universities, promoting associate degree programs for vocational training, and most interestingly “mitotic division” of populated universities in the country. These practices were expected to enhance access to higher education. Further, the most frequently articulated reason behind the expansion policy was creating a socially just and equitable higher education system in the country. These initiatives beget quantitatively successful results: the number of universities increased from 94 in 2005 to 207 in 2022, and the student population grew from slightly over 2 million in 2005 to 8 million in 2021 (YOK, 2024).

There is a growing body of literature highlighting how expanded and differentiated systems can lead to stratification in higher education (Sianou-Kyrigiou, 2010). Such systems often privilege selective universities and affluent students (Shavit et al., 2007) and favor lucrative fields. In a similar vein, maximally maintained inequality and effectively maintained inequality, as two distinct theories explaining educational inequalities, assert that educational inequalities are persistent but in shifting forms and types in the expanded education system. While maximally maintained inequality suggests that inequalities endure until affluent groups reach saturation points in education, effectively maintained inequality discusses how inequalities shift toward securing access to quality education.  

Drawing on these two theories, we argue that an expansion in higher education may widen access to universities, but at the same time it has the potential to deepen hidden injustices and create an inequitable higher education system. The access may create an illusionary form because inequalities persist both in access to higher education and in securing entry to qualified higher education institutions and lucrative programs (e.g., various engineering programs, medicine, etc). Therefore, this study aims to investigate access patterns in the Turkish higher education system by examining how gender, geographical location, and type of high school have been distributed among the most selective versus second-tier universities and the most lucrative and less lucrative fields. With that purpose, the research questions utilized are as follows:

1. What are the current patterns of access to prestigious universities and lucrative programs versus second-tier universities and less lucrative departments?
2. How does higher education access differ by gender, geographic origin, and type of high school in prestigious universities and lucrative fields versus second-tier universities and less lucrative fields?

Utilizing secondary national data provided by the Higher Education Council, this study is designed as survey research to map the terrain of higher education access resulting from the expansion of the higher education system and to seek answers as to whether the higher education expansion reached its maximal capacity and whether inequalities are effectively maintained. Being one of the main objectives of a survey design, this study reveals certain characteristics of a student population, such as gender, geographical origin, and school-type access to either prestigious or second-tier universities and lucrative programs, such as engineering or less lucrative fields, such as administrative sciences and education. Geographical origin refers to any of the seven geographies of Türkiye where students have access to higher education, while school type pertains to various high schools, differing in school quality, achievement scores, and infrastructure from which students graduate before entering higher education. The sample was selected based on a Turkish university ranking list, comprising six higher ranked universities and eight lower-ranked universities. The data for 2019 were retrieved for the selected universities from the Higher Education Council database. The variables included in this research were universities, departments, gender, school status (private or public), high school type, location (place of residence: living in the same city with university or not), and geographical region, representing seven regions of Turkey.

The analyses yielded remarkable results, indicating the differences in access patterns both to prestigious universities and second-tier universities in addition to lucrative and less lucrative fields in terms of gender, geographical location, and high school type. To elaborate further, although some studies showed that there is no gender disparity in access to higher education in Turkey, the results highlighted a pronounced underrepresentation of women in the most prestigious universities’ lucrative engineering programs. The representation both in prestigious universities and lucrative programs was skewed, meaning that access to prestigious universities and lucrative fields was disproportionately dominated by male students from socio-economically developed regions. Besides, graduates of Anatolian and Science High Schools -recognized as the highest quality schools populated by students with high socio-economic backgrounds - dominated these programs. Surprisingly, although higher education has been expanded to serve more spaces for all, second-tier universities, even their lucrative programs were not preferred by students. At first look, the expansion of higher education can be elusive, demonstrating growth in access, especially for women, graduates from diverse high school types, and students from less developed regions. However, a deeper analysis revealed a different reality as the expansion acts as a window-dressing practice and is a symbolic way of depicting just access to higher education with the limited actual representation of diverse groups in prestigious universities and lucrative programs of high-demand fields. Overall, the results indicate that inequalities persist, are effectively maintained and systematically reinforced, highlighting that despite rapid higher education expansion, inequalities in access remain entrenched in the Turkish higher education system. These results suggest that the expansion in higher education has the risk of deepening the inequalities and more importantly shading these inequalities. The findings urge for policies that go beyond quantitative growth to address quality disparities and enhance representation in newly established universities.

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