Tertiary education

Some 1.3 million vocational school students across Turkey have started providing community services as part of internship programs, serving elderly, low-income, disabled and disadvantaged people, state-run Anadolu Agency has reported.

Education sector reforms in the works aim to support students from low-income families while merging technical colleges and abolishing vocational training institutes. 

Why is Greece so culturally and intellectually impoverished even though in the past few decades tens of thousands of young people have sat the national university entrance exams, studied at the country's tertiary education institutes and graduated, and continue to do so?

The Council of State has lifted a regulation permitting governor's offices to unilaterally convert ordinary high schools into vocational religious high schools without considerating the needs of locals, a Turkish education union announced on Dec. 28.

The European Commission released its “Education and Training Monitor 2016” report, which among other things, notes that Greeks have poorer digital skills compared to the EU average, while there has been a reversal on tertiary education autonomy.

Greek university graduates have inadequate skills, compared to their peers in the rest of Europe, to access highly sought jobs, according to a report by the European Center for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP) regarding job prospects in Greece and Europe.

The education ministry's General Secretariat for Lifelong Learning has revoked the license of a vocational training institute in Athens and a college operating in northern Greece.

According to the ministry, IEK Xyni and the Mediterranean College in Thessaloniki did not fulfill at least one of the requirements for a permit.

Only 1.4 per cent of Romanian pupils are currently enrolled in vocational schools, which is not enough to supply the labour market with skilled workers, human resources experts and company representatives have warned.

World Bank Vice President for Europe and Central Asia Laura Tuck and Romanian Finance Minister Eugen Teodorovici signed on Friday a loan agreement worth 200 million euros for the Romania Secondary Education Project - ROSE.

Photo credit: (c) Alex MICSIK / AGERPRES ARCHIVE

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.