The Department of Economics was founded in 1992 by Prof. Dr. Şehabettin Yiğitbaşı, who is also the founder of Afyon Kocatepe University. The academic staff of the period consisted of faculty members with an economics background at the Afyon Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, which was affiliated with Anadolu University. A master’s degree program was opened in 1993, and a doctoral program was opened in 1995.
Our department has four fields: economic theory, economic policy, economic development and international economics, and economic history. The language of education in our department, which admitted its first students in 1993, is Turkish. Foreign language preparatory education in our department started as compulsory for the first time in 1998. Since 2003, 30% of the regular education programs have started to be taught in foreign languages. Students who began the evening education program in 2007 were allowed optional preparatory education.
The curriculum was updated in 2008 to increase the rate of elective courses. Our department first started accepting international students in 2012. With a regulation made by the Higher Education Council, economics courses taught in foreign languages were removed from the curriculum in 2013 due to the abolition of compulsory foreign language preparatory classes in departments that do not provide 100% education in foreign languages. The curriculum was updated in 2013 and is still in effect.
Due to the decreased demand for education in economics and administrative sciences throughout the country since the 2010s, our department’s evening education program was closed in 2019. With the removal of the threshold score in the central placement exam in 2022, approximately 60 students have registered every year. In addition, education continues with the participation of internal and external transfer students and international students. There are 75 undergraduate students and one graduate student in our department.
As of 2023, 60 of our students have benefited from the Erasmus student exchange program and have studied at universities in the European Union with which we have agreements for at least one semester, and 12 of our students have had the opportunity to do an internship for 30-90 days in private or public institutions in the European Union.
The undergraduate program offers our students a wide range of courses covering all areas of economics. In addition, emphasis is placed on using analytical and numerical methods in undergraduate economics education. Our students work at many levels in the public and private sectors in areas such as banking, foreign trade, and accounting. The master’s program includes theoretical, method, and application courses to develop systematic and independent thinking skills. The doctoral program offers diversity to students who want to pursue an academic career, with classes taught by a wide range of academic staff.
From 2003 onward, we have 3,367 undergraduates, 76 master’s, and 28 doctoral graduates. Sixteen academics who continue their teaching and training activities in our department have many publications in journals indexed by national and international indexes. In recent years, our faculty members have markedly expanded their publications within the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) scope.