TURKISH EDUCATION

Taranaki Daily News, 4 January 1935, Page 9

TURKISH EDUCATION

NEW RULES FOR THE UNIVERSITY. STUDENTS’ VEHEMENT PROTESTS. Higher , education in Turkey is expected henceforth to be the privilege ,Jply of those who are intellectually outstanding and can afford to devote the ghole of their time to their studies. This principle, on which new regulations at Istanbul University, at Constantinople, are based, is extremely unpopular, and has been received with vehement protests by the undergraduates, whose ranks have already been thinned .by exammations of great severity. Under the new regulations no undergraduate is. allowed to have any employment outside the university and is forced to attend 75 per cent, of the lectures and 66 per cent of the practical courses. If he fails to pass his examination at the second attempt, he will be automatically sent down. The students argue that very few of them have parents rich to bear the cost of their education for four years or more, and that the new measures will make the university available only for the upper class and those who have obtained scholarships. Until the engagement by the Turkish Government of German refugee professors of world-wide repute, well-to-do Turks were in the habit of sending their sons to European or American universities. The students at Istanbul University were, therefore, mainly drawn from the lower and the middle classes, who wished to pass examinations so as to qualify for .Government posts or to go to the Bar. Many of them worked during the day and studied in their spare time.