Nearly every family, if not all, aims to ensure that their children receive a high-quality education, regardless of the level, and students aspire to attend renowned schools for the excellent educational and social prospects they offer. However, for many families across the country, the dream of providing a quality education for their children is becoming increasingly unattainable. The skyrocketing expenses linked to high school education, currently reaching up to 1.5 million Turkish Liras in certain private schools, are creating an overwhelming financial burden for families. It also shouldn’t be forgotten that this fee doesn’t include supplies or extracurricular activities except the ones done by school clubs every week. As these expenses continue to rise, questions about the accessibility and equity of our education system grow more urgent.
With the LGS (High School Entrance Exam) marathon coming to an end, parents and students are trying to decide on which high school they will be attending next year, and the fees for the new academic year are being announced by private schools. This decision includes many aspects, such as the base score for entrance, academic and social opportunities, the success percentage of the graduates, and the universities to which the graduates were accepted. However, besides any of these factors, there is also a financial decision that needs to be made. Would you prefer a public or a private school? This decision is usually affected by the prestige of the high schools being compared. Most students who have the opportunity to attend a top 5 public school in the country often opt not to enroll in a private school. This is because the quality of education and available opportunities at both institutions are comparable, and the public school also comes with the advantage of not requiring hefty tuition fees, aside from the costs of school supplies and extracurricular activities. However, if both the public and private schools have similar levels of prestige or if the private school is slightly more prestigious, students are more likely to choose the private school despite the high costs. This wasn’t always the case since, in the past, public schools were always seen as more prestigious because the students needed to work extremely hard to get into a prestigious one, while it was easier to get into a private school because there weren’t many people who could afford the fees or wanted to spend that much money on education. The situation is still the same for public schools, but currently private schools are just as hard to get into as public schools, if not harder. So private school students need to be both successful and have money to actually be able to afford the fees. Of course, there are scholarships for those who are in financial need. However, most of the time, the scholarship amount is too little.
The reason for this shift is mostly the degrading quality of the Turkish education system, which values quantity over quality. A visitor can see the many new schools being built all around Istanbul. However, most of these schools provide under-average education, which causes students to be skeptical about attending and not be happy with their high-school life. Students at many public high schools in Türkiye have voiced concerns about the non-existent school clubs, teachers not attending classes regularly, inadequate explanations of topics, and some even engaging in inappropriate behavior. However, in most private schools, these problems are rarely addressed. The Ministry of National Education (MEB) has been taking new steps to eliminate most of these problems; however, from the looks of it, they have been failing, as evidenced by the increasing demand for private schools, which also causes a rise in fees.
The current stand of MEB on eliminating the inequalities between public and private schools has been met with extreme criticism since, from a private school point of view, its policy is basically to eliminate the opportunities provided by private schools rather than supporting and creating new ones for public schools. One of the biggest examples of this situation happened last year at Üsküdar American Academy. The Turkish International Model United Nations (TIMUN) for which preparations began in 2022, was canceled at the last minute because the MUN club wasn’t able to get approval from MEB. It is rumored that the club applied approximately nine times for approval and got rejected with different excuses each time. It is important to note that this organization is considered one of the most prestigious MUN conferences in Türkiye and was approved in all previous years. Private schools have been on thin ice ever since this incident, and many more organizations were canceled the same way. This caused a lot of controversy online and made parents as well as students even more skeptical about attending a public school since they are solely controlled by the government and MEB, whom the public can no longer understand, trust, or relate to.
Even though private schools are known for being freer about their internal affairs, this is also starting to change because of the pressures caused by MEB, as seen by the TIMUN example. The changes not only led to complaints from private school students and parents but also resulted in price increases. Schools now face added challenges in maintaining their independence from MEB and schools that are able to achieve this are seen as upper-level.
Many prestigious high schools in Türkiye are affiliated with consulates, such as the German or French consulates. Blocking these connections and not allowing the schools to carry out traditions or events that come with the affiliation essentially takes away one of the main qualities of these schools which is to provide students with different perspectives and cultures.
Everyone in Türkiye is aware that private school prices rise each year due to the economic state of the country. However, as mentioned above, this year, the new MEB policies also played a crucial role in the fee increase. Some known private high schools and their new fees include Robert College - one million and 47 thousand TL, Üsküdar American Academy - 955 thousand TL, Saint Joseph High School- 982 thousand TL, German High School - 905 thousand TL, and Saint George Austrian High School - 500 thousand TL. The most expensive and prestigious high school out of the mentioned
private high schools is currently Robert College, which had a fee of 440 thousand TL last year, which means that the new fee is more than double the old one. One of the most well-known universities in the world Harvard currently has a fee of 56.5 thousand dollars, which with the current currency equals to approximately 1.8 million TL. The fact that the cost of high school tuition is this close to Harvard’s displays just how absurd high school fees currently are in Türkiye. This raises questions about whether paying this much money only for high school is actually smart or attainable, rather than saving it for college and university. Some believe that even though the money is too much, it should still be paid for an adequate education and for students to make connections since, in this day and age, networking is more important than ever.
Even though the fees are increasing, the demand is never decreasing because it gets harder and harder to get into a known university every year, and it is always getting more competitive. Therefore, parents are doing everything they can to support their kids in this race, which includes spending large amounts of money only for high school since the government and MEB are not doing their responsibility of creating and maintaining an adequate education system. The current landscape of education underscores a concerning trend where learning has increasingly been overshadowed by financial gain, transforming it into a competitive arena where advantages are often dictated by wealth.