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The Turkish Education Association’s (TED) think tank TEDMEM has released a new report titled “Turkish Education in 2025 in a Snapshot,” drawing on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s widely cited Education at a Glance 2025 study.
Published on Sept. 9, the OECD report provides one of the most trusted international benchmarks for assessing education systems, using comparative data across member states.
For Türkiye, the findings present a complicated picture. On the one hand, education continues to pay: adults with university degrees earn nearly 49% more than their peers with only a high school diploma, with doctoral degrees yielding the steepest wage premiums among the OECD countries.
On the other hand, those same degrees are not translating into stronger employment outcomes.
Türkiye records the lowest employment rates for both high school and university graduates among OECD countries, with one in four degree holders outside the labor market.
The result is a system where credentials bring higher pay for those who succeed but still leave many graduates without jobs, highlighting the uneven returns of Türkiye’s expanding education system.
Despite its challenges, Türkiye remains a country where education pays. Among adults aged 25 to 64, those with a university degree earn nearly 49% more than their peers with only a high school diploma.
The OECD average is slightly higher at 54%, but Türkiye stands out in another way: the income premium at the very top.
Doctorate holders in Türkiye earn 46% more than those with a master’s degree—the widest gap in the OECD, where the average difference is just 21%.
In other words, advanced degrees in Türkiye bring a sharper jump in earnings than almost anywhere else. While the benefits of a bachelor’s degree are evident, the real payoff comes with postgraduate education, particularly at the doctoral level.
At the same time, gender disparities persist. Even with equivalent degrees, Turkish women earn 19% less than men.
That gap highlights how educational gains are only partially reflected in labor market outcomes, limiting the broader social impact of higher educational attainment.
Türkiye faces an unsettling reality: nearly one in three young people aged 18–24 is neither studying nor working. That’s 2.8 million people, the highest share in the OECD and more than double the international average.
The problem hits women especially hard. While 22% of young men fall outside both education and employment, the rate among women is 42%.
In OECD countries, the gender gap is almost negligible. The Turkish figure highlights deeper barriers—cultural, social, and economic—that keep young women on the margins, despite wider access to education.
Even as more Turks graduate, the labor market fails to keep pace.
Employment rates among 25–64-year-olds are the lowest in the OECD: 63% for high school graduates and 75% for university graduates. That means one in four degree holders is not working at all.
Unemployment data also breaks from the OECD pattern. In most countries, more education means significantly less unemployment.
In Türkiye, the jobless rate for young adults hovers around 10–11% across the board—whether they have no diploma, a high school certificate, or a university degree. The value of education is clear in earnings, but not in job security.
If more years of schooling yield higher income, Turkish students are still spending less time in classrooms compared to peers in developed economies.
Across primary and lower secondary levels, compulsory instruction totals 6,251 hours over eight years. The OECD average is 7,604 hours over nine years.
The structure of schooling in Türkiye explains part of the difference. Primary education lasts four years, compared with six in many OECD countries, while middle school stretches to four years rather than three.
Every year, Turkish primary students receive an average of 720 hours of instruction, compared to 804 OECD-wide. Middle schoolers get 843 hours, still below the OECD’s 909.
The focus of instruction also diverges. In primary school, Turkish students spend 30% of their time on reading, writing, and literature, and 17% on mathematics—above OECD averages of 25% and 16%. By middle school, however, the shares drop to 16% for language and 14% for math, only slightly above international norms.
This means Turkish students concentrate more heavily on core subjects early on but still accumulate fewer total hours in the classroom.
Combined with lower per-student spending, the shorter instruction time raises questions about how well the education system prepares students for increasingly competitive labor markets.
The weakest link remains money. Türkiye spends just over $4,000 per student each year at pre-tertiary levels, compared with $13,500 OECD-wide.
At the university level, it spends about $10,800 per student, roughly half the OECD average.
More troubling, per-student spending has actually declined since 2015, even as the OECD average rose. Education’s share of the national budget has also slipped, from 12.9% to 10.6%.
That squeeze undermines the country’s ability to match its rising enrollment with the resources needed for quality instruction and infrastructure.
Türkiye has doubled preschool enrollment in a decade, moving from 28% of 3–5-year-olds in 2013 to 54% in 2023. Still, that leaves the country last among OECD peers, where the average reaches 85%.
At age five, Türkiye actually outperforms the OECD average with 98% enrollment. But participation at earlier ages collapses. Only 43% of four-year-olds are in preschool, compared to 90% across the OECD. At age three, the gap is wider still: 15% versus 79%.
The numbers underline how Türkiye’s expansion has been concentrated at the very end of preschool, rather than earlier years, where the OECD places heavier emphasis.
Turkish students are far more likely to finish on time: 64% of undergraduates graduate within the expected duration, compared with just 43% across the OECD. Dropout rates are strikingly low—1% in the first year, while OECD averages stand at 13%.
That resilience gives Türkiye a rare advantage. Even though many students enter university after a delay of at least a year, once they start, they tend to stay and complete.
For policymakers, the challenge is not access or persistence, but how to translate those completions into meaningful employment.
Teachers in Türkiye face flatter pay scales than their peers abroad. The difference between a new teacher and a senior one is just 29%, while across the OECD the gap ranges between 57% and 62%. The structure leaves fewer incentives for long-term retention.
At the same time, class sizes show a sharp divide between public and private schools. In state primary schools, the average class holds 22 students, compared to just 11 in private institutions. OECD averages show much smaller differences.
The contrast highlights inequalities inside the system that cannot be explained by enrollment growth alone.
Türkiye’s education system is producing more diplomas and promising higher wages, but unless those gains are matched with stronger job opportunities and sustained investment, the country risks widening the gap between educational achievement and economic reality, becoming a hub for more incoming NEETs ("Not in Education, Employment, or Training").
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