Do University Names Shape Admission Selectivity?: Evidence from a University Partition Reform in Türkiye
Higher Education Policy, 2026 (SSCI, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.1057/s41307-026-00481-z
- Dergi Adı: Higher Education Policy
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, IBZ Online, Agricultural & Environmental Science Database, EBSCO Education Source, Education Abstracts, Educational research abstracts (ERA), ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Public Affairs Index, Academic Search Ultimate (EBSCO), Social Science Premium Collection (ProQuest), Education Collection (ProQuest), Education Source Ultimate (EBSCO), Political Science Database (ProQuest), Sociology Source Ultimate (EBSCO)
- Anahtar Kelimeler: Admission selectivity, Centralised admissions, Higher education branding, Higher education reform, Institutional naming, University partition
- Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
When governments partition existing universities into successor institutions, naming is often treated as a formality. This study provides evidence that institutional naming is associated with admission selectivity. Using programme-level admissions records from Türkiye’s centralised university entrance examination for 2012–2025, it exploits a 2018 reform that simultaneously divided 14 large-scale state universities and created 14 successors, nine with domain-specific names such as Technical University or Health Sciences University and five with generic city or person names. Following each transferred degree programme from its parent institution before the reform to its successor afterwards, programmes moving to generic-name successors declined by about 18 per cent in admitted-cohort selectivity while those moving to domain-specific successors changed little, a difference of about 19 percentage points. Within the domain-specific group the post-transfer change varies little between metropolitan and provincial institutions, although no metropolitan city received a generic-name successor. An institution-level comparison against 98 never-partitioned state universities gives a larger difference of about 42 percentage points over the post-reform period and about 39 percentage points by 2025, which also reflects the selectivity these programmes already commanded at their parents. That institution-level advantage is concentrated in transferred legacy programmes, consistent with names reducing uncertainty about familiar programmes. Naming appears to be a consequential and administratively inexpensive element of university restructuring.