The Effects of Public Investments and Accessibility to National Markets on the Demand for Distance Education

Anadolu Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi Anadolu University Journal of Social Sciences The Effects of Public Investments and Accessibility to National Markets on the Demand for Distance Education Kamu Yatırımlarının ve Ulusal Pazarlara Erişimin Uzaktan Eğitim Talebine Etkileri Assoc. Prof. Dr. Bahar Berberoğlu - Assoc. Prof. Dr. Rabia Ece Omay Prof. Dr. C. Necat Berberoğlu - Res. Asst. Çağlar Karaduman Başvuru Tarihi: 17.02.2017 Kabul Tarihi: 06.06.2017 Abstract Public investments are directed to the social and economic areas. The state must carry public investments and services to every corner of the country, such as transportation, sewage, energy, education and health care by considering social stability and meeting human needs. Otherwise, unrest and disobedience may start to be experienced in the under developed regions and migration begins towards the developed areas in which the infrastructure services are completed. The regional insufficiency in public investments creates political, social and economic imbalances and instability. Differences in physical, social and geographical conditions between the regions of a country are generally based on the problems such as, the uneven distribution of the population, the differences in agricultural production and dissemination of industrial activities only in certain regions. The regions which are close to the national market are generally known to be more developed due to the use of market advantage. Transportation infrastructure and access to the national market affect the economic performance of the regions. In all provinces of Turkey, Anadolu University Open Education System has an important place by providing open and distance learning services. In this study, the relationship between the demands of open education system is investigated both with public investments and national market accessibility index respectively. For this purpose, different regression models were established and these models were evaluated statistically. In conclusion, the presence of linear positive correlation was determined. Keywords: Public Investments, National Market Accessibility Index, Open Education System, Regression Analysis Öz Kamu, sosyal ve iktisadi olarak her iki yönde yatırım yapar. Kamu yatırımları sosyal dengeleri gözetmek ve beşeri ihtiyaçları karşılamak için yol, kanalizasyon, enerji, eğitim ve sağlık gibi hizmetleri ülkenin her köşesine götürmesi gerekmektedir. Aksi halde bölgelerde huzursuzluk ve itaatsizlik yaşanır ve böyle bölgelerden altyapısı tamamlanmış bölgelere göç başlar. Kamu yatırımlarındaki bölgesel yetersizlikler siyasi, sosyal ve ekonomik olarak dengesizlikler ve istikrarsızlıklar yaratır. Bir ülke içerisinde fiziki, beşeri ve coğrafi şartlar, nüfusun dengesiz dağılımı, tarımsal üretimdeki farklı- Assoc. Prof. Dr. Bahar Berberoğlu, Anadolu University Open Education Faculty, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Rabia Ece Omay, Prof. Dr. C. Necat Berberoğlu, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Res. Asst. Çağlar Karaduman, Anadolu University Faculty of Economics, sbd.anadolu.edu.tr 143 The Effects of Public Investments and Accessibility to National Markets on the Demand for Distance Education lıklar ya da sanayi faaliyetlerinin belli bölgelere yayılması gibi nedenlerle iç ticaret hacmi bölgeler arası farklara yol açabilir. Ulusal pazara yakın olan bölgelerin uzak olan bölgelere göre pazar avantajını kullanmaları nedeniyle daha gelişmiş olacağı bilinir. Ulaştırma ve erişim altyapısı bölgelerin ekonomik performanslarını etkilemektedir. Türkiye’de 81 ilde Anadolu Üniversitesi Açıköğretim Sistemi, açık ve uzaktan öğretim ile ülke çapında önemli bir yere sahiptir. Bu çalışmada Anadolu Üniversitesi Açıköğretim Sistemi kamu yatırımları ve ulusal pazara erişilebilirlik arasındaki ilişkiler açısından incelenmiş, bu amaçla farklı regresyon modelleri kurulmuş ve bu modeller istatistiksel açıdan değerlendirilmiştir. Kurulan regresyon modellerinde kamu yatırımları ve ulusal pazara erişilebilirlik ile Açıköğretim Sistemi’ne gelen yeni kayıtlar, ek yerleştirmeler, dikey geçişler, lisans tamamlamalar, ikinci üniversite seçimi ve kayıt yeniletme değişkenleri arasındaki ilişkiler modellenmiştir. Sonuç olarak, Açıköğretim Sistemi’ne yönelen talep ile söz konusu değişkenler arasında pozitif yönde doğrusal ilişkilerin varlığı tespit edilmiştir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Kamu yatırımları, Ulusal Pazara Erişilebilirlik Endeksi, Açıköğretim Sistemi, Regresyon Analizi Introduction Investment can be generally defined as a risk taken in order to gain a higher profit in the future by renouncing the current profit of the capital. The benefit can be categorized into two as social and individual. Public investments are made for the purpose of increasing social benefit (Kalem, 2015). Public investments are one of the expenditure items addressed within the capital intensive public expenditures. Public investment expenditures have a special significance due to their contributions to the economic and socioeconomic growth because, whereas, on the one hand, public investment projects meet the country’s need for infrastructure, on the other hand, they contribute to the production capacity and, also, increase the productivity of the private sector (Bağdigen & Dökmen, 2006). 144 Public investment expresses the investments made to the physical infrastructure such as roads, bridges, power plants, state buildings and systematic infrastructure such as technology support, research-development and human capital and the capital expenditures the productive usage of which continues for over a year (OECD, 2013). Education gains a significant meaning when it comes to the investment of public investments in the systematic infrastructure. The social characteristic of the state is to affect the strategy to be adopted for public investments. Public investments the social side of which is ignored incline towards developed regions under free market conditions and thereby display a characteristic which increases the regional inequality (Öztürk, 2006). Public investments and expenditures are the reason which deepens the regional discrepancy because an inclination towards developed regions in contrast to underdeveloped regions occurs in public investments and expenditures (Aktakas, 2006; Tek, 2009). Human capital, which is an alternative to physical capital in the industrial society, has come to the forefront in the information society and gained importance in the development strategies of the countries. Human capital, which is the personnel infrastructure of the information society, defines the specialized human fundamentally (Özyakışır, 2011). Lifelong education with the methods of open and distance learning in the creation of information society is one of the ways to increase the quality of human capital (Berberoğlu, 2010a). In the global competition environment, companies can be competitive to the extent to which they are productive in production and market (...truncated)