* Corresponding Author Various Aspects of Computer Engineering Undergraduate Education in Turkey Sinan Kul Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences Management and Information Systems Department Ataturk University 25240 Erzurum, Turkey sinan.kul@atauni.edu.tr Deniz Dal * and Tolga Aydin Faculty of Engineering Computer Engineering Department Ataturk University 25240 Erzurum, Turkey {ddal, atolga}@atauni.edu.tr Abstract—In this work, the computer engineering undergraduate education in Turkey is examined in detail by taking various aspects of it under scrutiny. This work also introduces a new web application which is the first of its kind and offers its content both in English and Turkish. Through the use of five different modules of this application, one can easily go over the curricula, search for a course, compare universities with one another using different merits and analyze several departmental statistics by means of the filters provided. We believe that the meticulously collected data presented in this work will be an invaluable source for everyone who is interested in taking education or conducting research in the field of the computer engineering in Turkey. More importantly, the source code of the application is shared with the public in order to enable the easy transfer of it to other disciplines. Keywords—Undergraduate, Computer, Engineering, Education, Curriculum, Statistics, Turkey I. INTRODUCTION In today’s world, it is no longer possible to maintain a quality life without computers since they improve the efficiency and the productivity of our daily routines. Until very recently, only the desktops and the laptops were the devices as we thought of computers, but this is not the case anymore. Now, they are all around us, especially due to the advent of the Internet. Today, the computers are mostly embedded in the appliances we use every day, such as tablets, smartphones, televisions and game consoles. We believe that the computer engineers have played an important role to make this paradigm shift possible and it is just the time for the Computer Engineering (CE) departments to revise their education style and the curricula based on today’s needs. Otherwise, our graduates cannot keep up with the ever increasing pace of the technological advancement. In this work, the CE undergraduate education in Turkey is examined in detail by taking various aspects of it under scrutiny. This work also introduces a new web application that offers its content both in English and Turkish [1]. To the best of our knowledge, this application is the first of its kind and through the use of five different modules of it, one can easily go over the curricula, search for a course, compare universities with one another using different merits and analyze several departmental statistics by means of the filters provided. We believe that the meticulously collected data presented in this work will be an invaluable source for everyone who is interested in taking education or conducting research in the field of the CE in Turkey. More importantly, the source code of the application is shared with the public in order to enable the easy transfer of it to different disciplines. The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section II gives some background information on the higher education in Turkey. The data collection process is explained in Section III. Section IV is a survey of related work. Section V introduces the first module (Departmental Statistics) of our web application. Section VI discusses the second module (Curriculum Review). The third module (Curriculum Statistics) is examined in Section VII. In Section VIII, the fourth module (Course Analysis) is presented. The fifth module (Course Statistics) is introduced in Section IX. Finally, Section X concludes this paper and presents some future work opportunities. II. THE HIGHER EDUCATION IN TURKEY A. Student Selection and Placement The Council of Higher Education (CHE) is the only and the most authoritative organization responsible for shaping Turkey’s higher education [2]. As a subdivision of the CHE, the Student Selection and Placement Centre (SPCC) is the unit in charge of the selection and the placement procedures of the candidates based on nationwide examinations [3]. Since 2010, every Turkish citizen who wants to get a bachelor’s degree in any field including the CE must register for a two-round university entrance exam conducted across the country by the SPCC. In the first-round, the candidates take the Transition to Higher Education Examination (THEE) held in April of each year. Only those who pass the THEE are entitled to take the second-round exam that is called the Undergraduate Placement Examination (UPE) held every year in June. The SPCC announces the UPE scores within the following July and publishes a manual (Manual 1) that will guide the candidates in their university/program preferences. In this guideline, the departmental quotas and the prerequisites of the undergraduate programs of all higher education institutions that have received the approval of the HEC and completed their infrastructures take place. By the first week of August, the candidates are expected to conclude their preferences by taking this manual and the UPE scores into account. The SPCC announces the B2