Turkish PhD students drawn to US and Germany

Nowadays university campuses are full of international students pursuing different programmes with different interests. Students from Turkey are no exception and are among the very highly mobile student populations.

An article by The New York Times noted last month that although Britain sent more than 9,000 students to the United States last year – a record – and Germany sent about 9,300, both lagged behind Turkey, which has been sending more than 10,000 students a year to the US since 2000.

Northern America, and particularly the US, has been the main attraction for Turkish students because English is their first foreign language beginning from kindergarten. The biggest flow of Turkish students to the US is at the PhD level, followed by their settlement there after graduation.

Apart from students from English-speaking countries, the number of Turkish students in Germany is remarkable. The prime reasons are related to the 50 years of Turkish migration and the existence of social and institutional networks.

These networks foster such mobility, as does the perception of a higher value for a German degree in the Turkish labour market as well as the lower tuition fees charged by German higher education institutions.

But caution is needed when reading the statistical data about international students. They are classified all over the world according to foreign citizenship. In Europe, where migration rates – but not necessarily naturalisation rates – are high, there might appear to be an overrepresentation of students who enter a country mainly for educational purposes.

To identify this group, Germany introduced two categories to the relevant statistics in 1997. The term Bildungsinlaender or non-mobile foreign student refers to the children of migrant parents who have grown up and been educated in Germany, while Bildungsauslaender or mobile foreign student means those who hold another country’s citizenship and have a visa to study in Germany.

Latest German statistics in the data report Wissenschaft Weltoffen indicate that students from Turkey represent 10% of all foreign students and comprise the major group among the international student population.

But ‘non-mobile’ Turkish students make up 29% of the non-mobile group and are again the largest, while mobile foreign students from Turkey are the sixth biggest, with 3.6 % – lagging behind China (12.3%), Russia (5.4%), Bulgaria (4.1%), Poland (4%) and Austria (3.8%).

First-year enrolments of mobile foreign students increased in 2011, although the rise was more pronounced in postgraduate studies, where they comprised 14% of general university enrolments and 12% at universities of applied sciences.

A further sharp increase occurred in foreign doctoral student numbers attending university for the first time, with 17% enrolled in 2010, a trend that is increasing and likely to continue because of newly introduced generous funding schemes and relatively much lower tuition fees.

Doctoral students are an inseparable cog in the knowledge production of a country, and Germany is well aware of this, with initiatives to attract more doctoral students from abroad.

In 2010, the majority of mobile foreign doctoral students were pursuing their education in mathematics and natural sciences, followed by engineering, social sciences, law and economics.

Among Turkish postgraduates, the popular subjects are economics, mechanical and process engineering, information technology and electro-technology. This is perhaps related to the perception in Turkey of Germany as a technologically advanced country.

Although Germany had introduced policies in favour of post-study employment for international doctoral graduates, there are still no data as to what those students do after graduating. An obvious option is staying on in Germany but this requires a job that matches the skills and education of the PhD holder.

Returning to the country of origin is another option while the third, often discussed by international doctoral candidates, is to search for employment in the wider European area.

The common belief is that their high skills will give them a competitive advantage in the labour market. But age, family-related issues, transnational ties as well as gender are some of the crucial traits to be studied further in international doctoral students’ and graduates’ decision-making.

* Dr Basak Bilecen is a postdoctoral researcher in the faculty of sociology at Bielefeld University in Germany.