Ozyegin University

A private university in Istanbul, located on the Asian side of the Bosphorous, Ozyegin University was created in 2007 by the Wall Street billionaire Husnu Ozyegin. Until recently he was rated by Forbes magazine as the richest living Turk, with a fortune estimated in early 2019 as around $2 billion.

One reason for a decline from an earlier fortune nearing $3bn was Ozyegin’s pledge at the time of foundation to spend at least $1bn on the university over the next 15 years. In 2011 it moved to its new purpose-built "quiet, peaceful and tranquil" campus at Cetmekoy, whose facilities include a 2,626-capacity student residence.

Calling itself "a financially accessible and entrepreneurial research university" aimed at a "Transformative Student Experience", it cites Cambridge and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as its long-term models for emulation.

In the academic year 2017-8, it estimated that 86 per cent of students, spread across its faculties of architecture and design, business, engineering, law, social science and aeronautics and astronautics and the schools of applied science, gastronomic arts and hotel management, were receiving some form of financial support.

Surveys in 2017 and 2018 found that it was a leading Turkish university in student satisfaction, and it has been shortlisted for a 2019 THE Asia Award for student services.

Enterpreneurship has been a leitmotif from the start, with the setting up of a Centre for Entrepreneurship in 2009, the beginning of a “10,000 Women Entrepreneurs" programme the following year and the creation in 2017 of a flagship ES-lab Innovation Centre on the Cekmekoy campus. Gastronomics students have set up their own restaurant, L’Atelier Bleu.