Student review [#11258] for Political Science and International Relations
at Izmir University of Economics - IUE

The one thing that I would advise to those who plan to study at Izmir University of Economics is to check twice all information you get from anyone working there. Administrative staff of Graduate School of Social Sciences lack basic English skills. Moreover, they lack knowledge of the University rules! They often provide wrong information, which might have detrimental effects on your student’s status. It also happens that they loose documents that students provide.
The worst thing that the University does is changing tuition fee payments as it suits them (at least for PhD program in Political Science and IR). During my two years there, they charged me as international student first, then as Turkish student and when Turkish Lira devaluated in 2018, they started charging me as international student again. They asked for Dollars in cash only. I informed Vice Rector, Head of the Department and International Office but nobody investigated this suspicious changes. Nobody reacted. Ms Hulya Icekara from International Office first accused me that I made those payments myself and when I showed her payment history on the University website, she said “rules changed”. Potential students should know that things like this might happen depending who “rules” the University. Everything might change the day “new cadre” takes over the University.
You will not receive any kind of guidance when problems occur; the person who supposed to be a contact between international students and the University lacks basic people’s skills and treats students with no respect.

Always save the receipts of tuition payments. Take screenshots of your online student profile. You will need it when some payments disappear from your profile and you will be asked to pay missing money from your total tuition. Never give up on your rights and be persistent, otherwise they will suck all money you have. They will tell you then “it was a mistake”.

Lack of professionalism and competence results in negligence of basic duties such as opening necessary courses on time, which means a student spends longer time in the program than necessary. Nobody takes responsibility for this kind of negligence.

The positive thing is that the University have some good professors, who in fact, are too good and too accomplished to teach there.
Many students at undergraduate and master level do not speak English enough to follow the lectures and often professors need to repeat some parts in Turkish.

Izmir University of Economics does not recognize their own education. If you took some courses from them before, and then you want to come back to the program after one or two semesters, they do not recognize those courses. They ask you to take half of them again, which basically means you pay for them again!