- Özvar: “AI training should be expanded across all universities and departments to cover all faculty members, and courses on the use of AI tools should be launched without delay.”

- “No faculty member should be left behind in this process.”

- Academics strongly support Özvar’s call: “AI training is important for understanding how students use this technology.”

- Students: “We would be delighted if universities offered AI courses.”

October 17, 2026

Council of Higher Education (CoHE) President Erol Özvar emphasized the importance of faculty members using artificial intelligence tools with pedagogical and scientific competence. “AI training should be expanded across all universities and departments to cover all faculty members, and courses on the use of AI tools should be launched without delay,” he said.

Stressing that no faculty member should be left behind in this process, Özvar noted that AI tools had largely been learned through individual efforts by faculty members to date. He said that, going forward, the potential and capabilities of these tools should be better understood through structured training and translated into practice. Özvar emphasized that faculty members should participate in these training programs without hesitation or apprehension. He also cautioned that faculty members who believe they already have sufficient individual knowledge of AI tools should not use that as a reason to opt out of the training programs.

- AI Training Expands to Medical and Law Schools

Özvar’s call to move beyond individual efforts in the use of AI at universities and promptly introduce structured training for faculty members and students has generated enthusiasm among academics and students alike.

Prof. Mehmet Serdar Güzel, a faculty member at Ankara University’s Faculty of Engineering and Director of its Artificial Intelligence Institute, commented on Özvar’s call, saying, “It seems impossible for an academic who does not understand AI to continue modern education, teaching and research processes. AI applications should be incorporated into educational and research activities according to each field of specialization.”

Noting that AI offers significant opportunities for personalized education, Güzel said Ankara University’s Artificial Intelligence Institute had been providing training to academics in medical and surgical specialties at the Faculty of Medicine and had also begun similar initiatives at the Faculty of Law.

Prof. Mehmet Tekerek, a faculty member at Ankara University’s Faculty of Educational Sciences and Artificial Intelligence Institute, said AI could accelerate academics’ routine tasks and that the use of these technologies would increase as their benefits became more apparent.

Prof. Ülkü Ayşe Oğuzhan Börekçi, Head of the Department of Journalism at Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University, emphasized that AI training was important for understanding how students use these tools. She also noted that academic texts written by humans are sometimes mistakenly identified as AI-generated.

- “AI Training Should Be Tailored to Different Academic Disciplines”

Bahriye Ruhsar Kavasoğlu, an instructor at Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University’s Polatlı Vocational School of Social Sciences, noted that tools used to detect coding errors in engineering differ from those used for text analysis in the social sciences.

Emphasizing that the use of AI in scientific publications should be explicitly disclosed, Kavasoğlu said, “Researchers need to clearly state in the methodology or acknowledgments section why they used AI when preparing an academic study and what kind of contribution it made.”

Güney Uğurlu, an instructor at Ankara University’s Artificial Intelligence Institute, said, “When we graduate our students, we are training engineers who understand AI, not just engineers. Faculty members, too, need to be able to use AI and teach students how to benefit from it in their courses.”

- Students Show Strong Interest in AI Training

Students welcomed Özvar’s call, saying they would be delighted if universities organized AI courses. They also called for training programs to be tailored to the needs of their respective academic disciplines.

Merve Fatma Çömez, a journalism student at Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University, said, “I believe AI courses should be offered through universities to everyone, from academics to students.”

Bera Hamza Uğur, a student in Ankara University’s Department of Engineering Physics and a researcher at its Artificial Intelligence Institute, said AI accelerates analysis and calculations in engineering and that training for academics in this field could improve the quality of their courses.

Ahmet Yasin Selçuk, a student in Ankara University’s Department of Energy Engineering, noted that AI facilitates literature reviews, code development and simulation studies. He added that universities had an important role to play in promoting the use of domestic and nationally developed resources in this field.

Gülce Çökenoğlu Uğurlu, a graduate student at Ankara University’s Artificial Intelligence Institute, said, “I would expect the academic teaching my course to show me how to use AI effectively.”

Görkem Gözet, a graduate student in the Department of Journalism at Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University, said AI should be used to deepen research rather than simply obtain ready-made information. “Every university, every faculty and every department should definitely have its own course,” he said.

Ege Özalan, a journalism student at the same university, said he used AI to check writing in his assignments and obtain preliminary information for his research. “We use AI, so why shouldn’t the academic teaching our course use it too, allowing us to meet on common ground?” he said.