It is a hard job to be a student in Turkey. This mandatory job starts at the age of 7 and continues as long as your patience suffices. Although some remember the student life being entertaining and trouble-free; for a majority, it was rigid and complex.

In Turkey, education is free and equal for everyone, but within this equation there exist some who are more equal than others. Despite the 8 year education requirement , many disadvantaged young people can’t even get the chance to reach elementary education due to financial insufficiencies. Though, the education system is supposed to be based on equality; nonetheless, it incurs severe segregation among people. Turkey’s west possesses more education opportunities compared to its east. As an example, while a classroom in the west has 30students on average, this number sometimes exceeds 50s in the east. The financial situation of the students negatively reflects on the physical condition of their educational facilities, their education and intrinsically their success.

The use of education for the purpose of instilling students with official ideologies inhibits students from developing the essential abilities such as critical thinking and questioning as well as introduces dogmatic values. Besides all these system hitches, the lack of education in native languages prevents other cultures to succeed in their education, or even just maintain their entities in Turkey.

From elementary school to university, in order to prove their achievement, students are required to pass hundreds of exams that are mostly based on memorization. Due to the insufficient education provided by the government, students are obliged to take additional classes from private institutions to be successful. As a result of their financial situations, most students can’t afford to get help from the private establishment and hence fail to succeed in these exams.

Even as a student succeeds in the final three-hour exam (ÖSS, The Student Selection Exam) that determines his/her future despite all the unfavorable situations; he/she can still be disappointed after reaching the university life previously misleadingly described as “the liberated world.”

Even though the universities are free, students still have to pay for accommodations, school supplies and other fees. While the university student suffers from fulfilling these basic expenditures, cultural and intellectual self-development appears as an extremely luxurious expense. Hence, all previously stated reasons contribute in part to the discontent of the students.

Universities, especially in 1980’s, following the military coup d’état, were left far from confederacy and scientific knowledge by the management. This positioning transformed universities from a science-centered institution to a technical course. The contributions of a university student to the society were reduced. This in return negatively influenced the necessary resistance to the unfairness within community.

Lately, although the society appears more responsive to injustice, the disappointments of the adolescents wont be defeated unless universities are fully able in science and encourage free thinking. As mentioned before, there are financial obstacles for many successful adolescents to become university graduates. Universities should gain functionality in accordance with students’ financial and intangible needs by developing into a center of science and freedom. In order to reach this goal, adolescents need to become vanguards to defend their rights and take action. This activity will symbolize their possession of a free and scientific thinking.