THE EFFECT OF ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE ON THE GRADUATE NUMBERS OF ANADOLU UNIVERSITY DISTANT EDUCATION FACULTIES

In globalization, developing countries and Turkey need to make intensive investments in all sectors for competing in the international markets and to sustain their economic development. They also need to make huge investments for higher education to improve their human capital and qualified manpower needed in rapid economic development. But when their common problem scarcity of funds for investments comes together with big investments needs for higher education, the importance of distant education increases. In Turkey, since 1982, this system is executed by Anadolu University, and contributed in meeting the growing need for qualified manpower in development. The contribution of education in economic development was treated in former studies. But correspondingly, we treated the contribution of economic development to education. We aimed to evaluate the effects of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the shares of education expenditures in GDP on graduate numbers of open education faculties with regression analysis. But, because of the lack of education expenditures statistics, by mentioning the relation between the Schooling Ratio of Higher Education and graduate numbers of open education faculties, we used these values. Among all regression techniques only ordinary least squares method was reliable results and we found that economic performance contributes education.