The biggest portion of our stock of problems

Turkey is a country that prefers to postpone issues rather than solve them. Not that any of our problems have truly been solved, but those we sweep under the rug and tend to forget are many times worse than the ones we’ve solved.

We have a colossal stock of problems that have accumulated in this way. In this colossal stock, there is one precious member that has reached gigantic proportions because it has been pushed back for such a long time: Education.

An OECD report, issued last month, displayed the situation of this issue in a dramatic way. In 2000, under 10 percent of the 25-64 age population in Turkey were university graduates. In 2012, it was 17 percent. Yes, there is an almost two-fold increase, but Portugal had similar rates to us in 2000 and is now at 20 percent. A more striking example is Ireland: While 20 percent of its 25-64 age population in 2000 were university graduates, now this rate is 40 percent. All this while we are the ones boasting of having such a young population.

How about our high school graduate levels? In the same age group, less than 20 percent of our population are high school or equivalent graduates. Half of them are graduates of vocational schools. In Germany, almost 60 percent of this segment are high school graduates. An overwhelming majority of them are vocational school graduates. In South Korea, 40 percent of the population are high school graduates.

So, a significant portion of Turkey’s population does not have adequate education, and our country does not have the knowledge or skills required by the 21st century.

If we remember that those who are 64 today were born in 1950, then we can better understand that we have been accumulating our problem of not giving adequate education...