Have I pointed out before that this Twitter is a great communication medium? Well, let me say that again. A while ago, I asked why company managers think they are doing a fine job whereas surveys on how efficiently the same companies operate suggest the exact opposite? The reality was different from the company managers’ dreams about themselves. After I wrote that article I received a message on Twitter saying, “Dunning-Kruger syndrome :)…” I sat down to research the Dunning-Kruger syndrome in social psychology journals. I just couldn’t bring myself to think our case could be as pathetic, so I dumped the issue in one of the “On Hold” folders in my mind.  But now that the university entrance exams have been announced, I recalled that sinister test right away. I began to think to myself that what we have is indeed the Dunning-Kruger syndrome, which upsets me dearly. Let me explain that to you.

The first stage of the Higher Education Entrance Exam has been announced. Some 2 million students sat in the exam. Setting aside the 50,000 students who received zero points, the performance of the rest of the participants doesn’t appear much brighter either. Students were tested in Sciences, Basic Mathematics, Social Sciences and Turkish language. Forty questions were in each section. The results are in the table below. First of all, 20 percent of the 160 questions got correct answers on the average -- 20 percent! Some 2 million students and 20 percent… You gotta be kidding me! The rate of correct answers in Sciences drops to 10 percent. In Mathematics, 13 percent. We are talking about kids who can give correct answers to only 40 percent of the questions in their native language, and once more, I have to say, you gotta be kidding me... This is the second point. And the third is: Soon these students will come to universities, and then enter professional life. This last point made me think, “I guess this really has to be the Dunning-Kruger syndrome.”

What happens when these kids start to work? I explained it earlier, only 3 percent of employees in Turkey believe that they are not qualified enough to do their jobs. The OECD average in this field is 22 percent. Once more, the rate of employees thinking they are not qualified enough to do their jobs is 22 percent in the OECD, which includes Turkey, and 3 percent in our home country. And there are those who think they are overqualified to do their jobs: 25% in the OECD and 40% in Turkey think this is the case. Now here is the thing: Underqualified kids who can answer 20 percent of the questions in the university entrance exam on average start to think that they are overqualified for their jobs as soon as they enter professional life. They don’t for once hesitate to think that they may have a starters’ qualification problem. In fact, let alone science and mathematics, they can’t speak English, they can’t use a computer and heaven knows why and how, but they are assured that they are overqualified. This is where I think the most significant problem of Turkey lies: There is a fundamental problem of mediocrity here. But let me explain to you the Dunning-Kruger syndrome first:

Two psychologists come up with the test in Cornell University in the US. The question is very simple, but somehow such interesting work is always carried out by the universities of the “declining” Western civilization.  David Dunning and his student Justin Kruger published their first article on the issue in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1999. The article opens with a real-life incident in 1995. McArthur Wheeler storms into a bank in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, gun in hand, with the intention of robbing the bank. He’s not wearing a mask or anything. He is identified in the security camera records and arrested instantly. But McArthur Wheeler insists that he isn’t the robber. When he sees the camera records, he objects in awe: “That can’t be! I dabbed lemon juice on my face!” He sincerely believes that just as you make invisible ink, dabbing lemon juice on your face makes your image captured by the cameras blurred and disguised. This is where the research question of David Dunning and Justin Kruger comes from. They wonder: Can someone, who is unqualified and ill-equipped to handle a certain task, assess their performance on their own?

The study emphasizes that there is the possibility of a double risk for underqualified persons. They can both set up the wrong strategy for success (e.g. Wheeler) and cannot distinguish dream from reality as they lack the capacity to assess whether or not they are successful in whatever they are doing. That’s tough. Qualified people, on the other hand, are well aware of the requirements of the job and reason that what is a facile task for themselves may be just as straightforward for others, and therefore consider themselves less successful than they actually are. Hence, the problem with the former is to be ignorant about oneself, whereas the problem with the latter is being unable to assess others correctly; which makes the former unwilling to spend effort to improve, whereas the latter is engaged in a constant effort.

For their 1999 article, Dunning and Kruger tested Cornell University students in four diverse areas. They asked an additional question to students on how they think they performed as they handed in their tests. “Among peers, would you be among the top 25%, the bottom 25%, or somewhere in between with your grade in this test?” they asked. And what was the outcome? Those who dreamed they would get the best grades were in fact the poorest performers, whereas the best performers would assess their possible performance in poorer terms. The graph here demonstrates this tendency. In a way, this is dreaming of conquest during defeat. You happen to believe you run from one accomplishment to another, while there is a profound problem of competence at stake.

Dreaming of conquest during defeat means in fact conflating dream with reality. I believe that the education system in Turkey is the main capacity constraint of the Turkish economy. Students who leave this system are well seasoned with those fantasies of grandeur peculiar to losers. That is apparently what happens when you change five ministers in ten years and don’t really know what to do.

The university entrance exams were announced the other day, and Turkey’s true colors were revealed once again. ın my point of view, we have to admit from this point onwards that Turkey is hijacked by a form of the Dunning-Kruger syndrome. We’d be keen to abide by the maxim “entrust the competent,” but that seems to be no mean feat in this country.

What to do? We have to start from scratch, from the very foundation. Turkey needs a serious education campaign. Just so you know.

Table 1: Higher Education Entrance Exam 2015 results (All candidates)

Source: ÖSYM

Figure 1: Actual test results and personal perception of participants

Source: Kruger & Dunning (1999), Unskilled and Unaware of it: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments

This commentary was published in Dünya on 23.03.2015.