Karabuk University was one of 17 new state universities created in Turkey in 2007. It serves Karabuk, the city close to the Black Sea which was built up in the 1930s as the centre of the national iron and steel industry.
It started with faculties previously affiliated to Zonguldak Karaelmas University (now Bulent Ecevit University).
The university's motto is "your home for contemporary education".
By 2017 it had grown to a student population of 56,000 students, including 3,600 from overseas. It has adopted the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) and was shown in a national survey in 2017 to be the Turkish university most involved in Erasmus+ exchanges, with 120 students studying abroad.
At the same time it retains firm local roots. Research centres include the Iron and Steel Institute, deemed of such importance in 2011 that its foundation stone was laid by the President of Turkey. It aims to develop skilled personnel, new production strategies, high quality products and research and development projects for the national iron and steel industry.
Other notable features of the Karabuk Iron and Steel campus include the Kamil Gulec Library, built to resemble a row of books on a shelf, and an animal shelter.
University publications include the high-impact journal Engineering Science and Technology.
Outside Karabuk, Safranbolu, a UNESCO Heritage site, hosts the faculty of tourism, a vocational school and the Fethi Taker Institute of Fine Arts, accommodated in the former Syphilis and Forlorn Hospital, a national monument. University archaeologists and student teams have led the excavations at Hadrianopolis, a major site near Eskipazar, home to another vocational school.
