Our new education and employment issues

The increase in Turkey's university enrollment rate in recent years has reached the point of exaggerating a measure taken to close a gap in higher education from which we once suffered greatly. The number of university students, which has already surpassed 8 million, produces a strange index in which we have moved ahead of all developed countries. The strangeness, of course, lies in the fact that the rising number of university students has gone beyond the country's sociological development and needs.

That the number of university students relative to the population is higher than in Germany, Britain and the USA may be something to praise from one angle, but from another it is an indicator of other problems that require swift measures. Admittedly, when making some comparisons, one must keep in mind both that Turkey is a rapidly developing society and economy and that its proportion of young people is higher than in other countries. That the number of students is as low as 3 million in a country like Germany, where the young population has shrunk considerably, must also be attributed to Germany's particular policy on higher education or the model it applies. In this respect there are serious differences even between Germany and the USA.

In fact, when we recall where we came to this point from, and even why we came to it, we can say today that we have reached the target and overshot it. At the starting point, that is, until some 20 years ago, admission to university was seen, and applied, almost openly as a matter of ideological and class affiliation. The number of universities was limited, and their quotas could accommodate only a very small share of those who applied to higher education each year. Therefore, in order to curb demand, besides heavy examinations, keeping quotas below capacity, the headscarf ban and the coefficient practices also ensured that implicit criteria operated in selection and placement.

In 2002, for example, only 135 thousand of the 1 million 700 thousand who took the university exams could be placed. The rest were left to fend for themselves. If the young people who sought higher education every year and could not get it were able to find jobs in the employment world according to their level of education, so much the better, but in fact even that was not possible. Those who could not enter university were thrown into life as hopeless and helpless unemployed people.

The need to be met urgently was to respond to the demand of the young population seeking university education; and the demands that went unanswered appeared before us, on the one hand, as a source of unhappiness in society and, on the other, as an increasing search for education abroad.

By any measure this could not be considered a rational choice in the field of higher education. That is why measures such as opening at least one university in every province and increasing the quotas of existing universities were urgent responses to this need. With the number of universities reaching 207 over time, the number of young people who demanded a university education and could not get it was, to a large extent, reduced.

In a sense, the supply of higher education and the problem of employment were separated from each other. Education was seen as a separate problem and was, in a way, solved through this route. As for employment, the eco-system created by the newly opened universities themselves made room for a significant portion of the population to enter working life, but of course not for all of them.

In parallel, Turkey is growing, and in line with global trends this growth leads to the steady expansion of the service sector. The concrete counterpart of this is a need for technical knowledge and therefore for more education. That Turkey developed its supply of higher education simultaneously with these developments, both within itself and in the world, can be counted among the greatest advantages that give it competitiveness in such a world. But this advantage is still not without problems. We have said before as well that the time has come, indeed passed, for us to address these problems.

This figure alone should be warning enough: at present, at least 1.5 million people graduate from our universities every year, and all of them go into a job search.

It may be said, so be it; considering Turkey's present dynamism, growth and development, this search may even be seen as a sign of a quite different opportunity. However, the educational style, expectations and understanding of work of this educated population increasingly make them a source of serious dissatisfaction.

We are talking about a kind of consumption of human resources in which someone holding the title of university graduate is now closed off from employment in a field lower in status. People close themselves off even from jobs that could well be much more profitable. The matter is a deeper problem than the shortage of intermediate-level staff.

Today, when the unemployed and those looking for work find one another, our potential employment supply and demand could come into balance. But a status anxiety conditioned solely through education prevents this meeting, and we are faced with an unemployment problem that simply cannot be reduced.

In many sectors today there is a serious human resources shortage because no one can be found to work, whereas a large number of unemployed university graduates have accumulated. Most have conditioned themselves to a job according to their educational level, and since they cannot find one in the private sector they are waiting for public employment. The public sector has no capacity to meet this much employment expectation, and this situation deepens with each passing day.

Raising education to 12 years in fact inevitably increases the demand for university as well, and draws everyone who, under normal conditions, could work, indeed should work, in agriculture into urban life and from there into this familiar cycle of employment demand. In this case our agriculture and animal husbandry face a serious crisis because of a shortage of people to work. Yet both agriculture and animal husbandry have by now moved away from the peasant mode of production and been modernized; even so, having lost their natural workers, they have not been able to gain new ones.

This circle needs to be broken somewhere, but where?