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Academic Freedom. Though Turkey pays the biggest share of the school's annual budget ($2,400,000 this year), METU also gets about $600,000 annually from many international sources. It has more autonomy than most other higher-educational institutions in the Middle East. Though the Minister of Education has a voice in financial matters, the president and his trustees make the policies. Turkey's recent military coup caused some anxious moments, and Burdell expects that he will have to justify some of the schemes decided upon during the Menderes regime. "We can only go as fast as the new government permits us to go. But we may actually emerge a more solid institution in the end."
The project that everyone hopes the new government will continue to support is a vast expansion starting late next year. The plans are to start work on a handsome permanent campus on a 12,000-acre plot that was donated by the Menderes government. The land is now filled with wheat and grazing sheep. But METU's visionaries expect it to be the seat of a great university city with a student population of 12,000 and an overall population of 20,000. And they look on it as the model for a succession of similar schools that will some day rise throughout the Middle East.