Millions of fates are put to the test in Turkey

After years of study, expensive private classes and tough mental preparation, a Turkish student’s entire life path might depend on how he or she responds to a basic human need: having to pee during an exam.

"I urgently had to go to the restroom during the exam, but I managed to stay until the end [of the test]," Hale Turan, an 18-year-old high school senior who took last week’s university entrance exam, also known by its Turkish acronym, YGS, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.

The ban on bathroom breaks during the critical, 160-question test is only one of the obstacles facing students taking the exam, which determines what university they can attend. The restriction has, however, failed to eliminate questions of cheating on the test, with a major controversy erupting around this year’s exam.

Claims that the test’s questions could be solved through a simple coding system have not been confirmed by either the Education Ministry or the Student Selection and Placement Center, or ÖSYM, which administers the exam, but the allegations have upset students.

"At this point, I don’t trust anything," Gizem Bekar, a senior in high school, told the Daily News. "After years and years of work, this shouldn’t be what you get."

"I am almost sure there is cheating but we don’t know what to do," said another student, Ceyhun Karay. "Even if they cancel [the exam results], then why did we study for so long? Who will pay for our work?"


Some 1.7 million students took this year’s exam, competing for approximately 600,000 spots at the country’s 157 private and state universities. The disparity means 1.1 million test-takers will not be able to enter college, though some may take the exam again in subsequent years.

The pressure to succeed means that students engage in years of preparation geared toward learning better test-taking skills. In order to get a high score on the exam, which covers various topics such as math, science, the Turkish language and Turkish history, students often start taking private classes or attending private tutoring centers from the age of 10, attending such courses after school, on weekends, or both.

The annual cost to attend a private tutoring center ranges from 2,000 Turkish Liras to 10,000 liras and can be as much as 30,000 liras a year for centers that provide one-on-one instruction.

"There are 4,200 private tutoring centers in Turkey and 1.2 million students attend them," İsmail Koncuk, head of the education trade union Türk Eğitim-Sen, told the Daily News. "It is a major industry. Turkey has 85,000 unemployed teachers and many of them work at these centers for minimum wage."

Private tutoring centers have indeed become a major industry in Turkey, generating $1.8 billion in annual income and employing 100,000 people. In addition to re-covering the school curriculum, these centers mostly focus on the test questions for the university entrance exam, teaching students methods to arrive at better and faster answers.

"The private tutoring sector is growing every year due to the wrong policies of the Education Ministry," Koncuk said. "These centers have become alternatives to school and education has been privatized this way."

Others disagree, saying that the private centers provide a service to students who want to enter university. “Of course one can study alone and get into university, but private centers also teach students how to compete with each other,” said Faruk Köprülü, the head of ÖZ-DE-BİR, an association of private teaching centers.


This year’s alleged cheating scandal has added fuel to the arguments of those who say that a single test should not be the only route to university admission.

"In some countries universities themselves choose their students and in others they consider high school grade point averages, yet Turkey cannot implement either of these methods," said Professor İsa Eşme, who served as vice-president of the country’s Higher Education Board, or YÖK, from 2005 to 2009. But he believes there is currently no viable alternative.

In making his case, Eşme gave the example of "Super High Schools," special high schools set up in the 1990s for students with high grade point averages. "We all know that many student GPAs were pumped [up] so they could go to these schools. The same thing is very likely to happen [if the university entrance system is changed]," he told the Daily News. "And if universities choose their own students, they would come under immense political pressure. Unfortunately a test is the best way for Turkey right now."

Professor Üstün Ergüder, the former president of Istanbul’s Boğaziçi University and now the director of the Education Reform Board at Sabancı University, argued that an alternative system could be introduced in the form of a two-step method.

"In the past, in order to graduate from high school, one had to go through a special exam; perhaps a similar method can be applied again and universities might use both the YGS and this exam [to make their admission decisions]," Ergüder said.

According to Koncuk from Türk Eğitim-Sen, however, Turkey needs to start from scratch.

"We can have an alternative [university admission] system but in order to do that we first need to standardize educational quality,” Koncuk said. “From first grade to the end of high school, we need to have the same educational quality at every school. Whatever system we apply, we need to create equal standards, otherwise this problem of trust will continue."


Establishing more universities could be another solution, according to Köprülü of ÖZ-DE-BİR, who said this would "at least eliminate the second-time test takers."

Former YÖK official Eşme, however, believes such an approach would only generate another layer of problems.

"There is already a lack of instructors at many universities. Setting up more universities without a substructure and without a [certain level of] educational quality means graduating unqualified people," Eşme said. "Some students graduate without taking classes from experts. We need to first deal with the existing universities rather than thinking about opening new ones."


Testing controversies are not new to Turkey, erupting most recently on last year’s Public Personnel Selection Examination, or KPSS, which is also administered by the Student Selection and Placement Center, or ÖSYM.

Allegations of cheating were made after 350 candidates gave correct answers to all 120 questions in the education sciences section, which is required for teacher candidates. The claims were proven when daily Radikal revealed that at least 20 of those 350 test-takers were either relatives or spouses or roommates. The exam was canceled as a result.

In 1999, the university entrance exam was canceled hours before the test, when it was found that two of the booklets had been stolen.


/Hurriyet Daily News/