Higher education policies and overeducation in Turkey

Abstract

Mahmut Ak, shocked the attendants in the annual ceremony for the start of the 2015-16 academic year by announcing that student enrollments for current academic year have been reduced 1. This news came as a surprise to the entire academic community in Turkey. He further explained that this decision was motivated by the poor job market conditions for university graduates. The difficult labor market for university graduates is not an unnoticed issue in itself but the unemployment rate for university graduates has recently reached unprecedented levels that Turkey has never experienced before. Turkey is one of the few developed countries in which unemployment rate for workers with university degrees is higher than less educated workers. The 2015 employment statistics for Turkey confirms Professor Ak's concern. The July 2015 statistics that were released in October show that university graduates accounted for 24% of the unemployed workers in July 2015 while the same ratio in April 2014 was only 18% 2. Concern about this issue was also acknowledged by the founder and chairman of the board of Trustees of Gedik University, Hulya Gedik, in October 2015: "There are more than 200 universities in operation. … However, graduation doesn't guarantee getting a job. There are one million jobless university graduates [in Turkey]" 3. This bad employment news comes at a time when a record large cohort of Turkish university students are expected to enter the labor market in the next two years. At the same time the recent political turmoil and ethnic violence is taking a toll on Turkish economy and its capacity to generate new jobs. In this policy report we analyze the causes and consequences of the emerging employment crisis of university graduates in Turkey. Our analysis has three objectives: 1) to offer an overview of the latest developments in quantitative growth of enrollment in higher education institutions and employment status of university graduates in Turkey, 2) To analyze the policies and institutions that have led to this rapid rise of university graduates and, 3) to assess the possible responses of policy makers and households to this crisis. In light of the fact that a large amount of public and private resources are spent on higher education, the lack of sufficient economic opportunities for university graduates represents a waste of valuable resources that could have been invested elsewhere. The frustration of millions of educated unemployed youth is also a potential source of political and social instability. The significance of this analysis extents beyond Turkey and is relevant for other Middle Eastern economies as well. Similar to Turkey, many countries in the region,

Context and Validation of the Subjective Underemployment Scale Among Turkish Employees

“…Many existing studies on underemployment in Turkey have used objective measures or focused on one or two dimensions of underemployment. For example, studies have operationalized underemployment as a mismatch between ideal and real hours worked, overeducation, or field mismatch (Habibi, 2017; Susanli, 2017). Others have measured perceived overqualification (Erdogan & Bauer, 2009) or several different forms of underemployment (Tasci, 2005).…”

“…OECD (2016) statistics regarding skills for jobs revealed the rate of field of study mismatch as %36, and qualification mismatch as %43, and the large proportion of the qualification mismatch includes overqualification (%29.1). Likewise, as highlighted by Habibi (2017), one of the significant causes of underemployment in Turkey is overeducation which leads to overqualification. An increasing trend of overeducation is also emphasized in Turkey (Filiztekin, 2011).…”

“…Obviously, this continuous increase in access to higher education has caused a surplus of university graduates. As a result, a growing number of university graduates who cannot find skilled jobs in their fields of study have to take semi-skilled or unskilled jobs that do not require university degrees (Habibi, 2017). Numerous university graduates may wind up as clerical, waiters, shop assistants, drivers, and participate in the informal labor force in the industry with low wage.…”

The Topography and Sources of Multidimensional Poverty in Turkey

“…On the other hand, evidence shows that a longer period of mandatory schooling has a positive influence on health outcomes (Baltagi et al 2019) and gender disparities (Kırdar et al 2018) in the pre-2000. Habibi (2017) investigates the rising higher education capacity in Turkey and underlines the negative consequences stemming from over-education, which translates into a mismatch and unemployment in the labor market. Filiztekin and Karahasan (2015); Erdem (2016) also confirm that regardless of the policy shocks, there exists spatial heterogeneity in the distribution of educational human capital development, which mimics the underdeveloped east and developed west duality.…”

Preventing overeducation and graduate surplus

“…Joblessness and underemployment of university graduates has emerged as a common policy challenge throughout the Middle East in the past two decades. The region’s three largest countries: Egypt, Iran and Turkey all suffer from excess supply of university graduates in comparison to employment opportunities that require university skills – a condition that is commonly referred to as over-schooling or overeducation (Habibi 2015a, b, 2017).…”