Why doesn’t Turkey remunerate the efforts of the well-trained young people?

I noticed this the other day when I was checking the 2013 Transition Report of the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). It appears that Turkey surpasses transition countries in the number of recipients of science and engineering doctorates at American universities. As of 2011, the number of recipients from Turkey was 90 per million people while the numbers were barely around 30 in transition countries such as Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. The total number for transition countries is around 300 per million. Turkey does not do badly concerning skilled labor force. Why can’t it do miracles, then? Why  is it stuck at the bottom on innovation indices? Where the hell are the science and engineering doctors today? Where do they work, what are they doing? PISA rankings are surely important, but it is useful to check what the trained labor force does. We are preoccupied with analyzing how today’s students are doing. What about the ones who are trained and ready to join the labor force? Don’t you wonder what we offer them? I do.

Remember, a couple of months ago I wrote about a study by Associate Professor Oğuz Ergin of TOBB University of Economics and Technology? Based on that, I asked if you would you embark on an investment with a return of forty years. Let me remind you of his calculation: sum up the cost of education for a single child from preschool to doctoral program, including the cost of private teaching institutions. Assume that the child received a doctorate degree from Harvard. If he or she returns to Turkey, he or she would earn a maximum of 5000 liras a month. According to this calculation, the investment made by the parents could be offset in thirty something years. You can see the details of the calculation on Professor Ergin’s Facebook page.  After I saw the figures in the EBRD report, I realized that there were many people in Turkey who already have made that investment. That’s why Turkey holds a successful position in the report’s rankings. Before Turkey are China, India, South Korea, Taiwan, and Canada. Turkey is followed by Thailand and Japan.

So, what do these people do when they receive their degrees, return home to Turkey or stay in the US? That was the first question I asked myself. I voted for the second option, but soon I understood that I was wrong. The majority of the Chinese and the Indians prefer to stay in the US, by 80-90 percent, whereas around 60 percent of the Turkish, Korean, and the Japanese return after graduation. They are making an investment that will pay after at least three decades and return home. And they have been following this pattern for decades now. Another piece of the puzzle for me.

Are they happy with their lives? There is no direct indicator of this, but we can say no judging by the latest study of TEPAV research associate Güneş Aşık on idle employment and national wealth in Turkey:  30 percent of the university graduates work at jobs which require secondary school-level skills. Why? Because there are no better jobs. As a result, the number of people in the work force who believe that they could be more useful in other jobs is on the rise. This is what we call underemployment. People are not happy with their jobs because they don’t believe the requirements and the wage of the job match their skills. Did you know that there is a group of unhappy professionals in Turkey and that this is reflected in labor force statistics? Ms. Aşık’s study helps us see this problem.

When I asked what type of an investment pays back in three decades, there was one grand question in my head: Why doesn’t Turkey remunerate the efforts of the well-trained young people? On page 72, the EBRD report investigates the correlation between institutional infrastructure and returns to education. For job opportunities that secure due returns to investments in education, there should be rule of law, a well-functioning judicial system, contract enforcement, and an efficient administrative mechanism. Without such institutional infrastructure neither can the economy be innovative, nor investment in education yield returns.

They bear all the challenge to study at American universities, receive doctorate degrees, and return home, but it all ends up  a huge waste. Considering all the conditional grants given to make sure that they return to Turkey after graduation, the waste grows further. Returns to education cannot be improved in Turkey. Not before the second era of the rentier economy is over. Not without a new constitution.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 6.12.2013