Turks spend $4 billion a year on education abroad

ISTANBUL

The nearly 100,000 Turkish students who study abroad each year spend some $4 billion to do so, according to new data from UNESCO.

These students choose foreign schools mostly for their undergraduate and graduate studies as well as for language courses. Students with limited financial resources opt for work-and-travel or internship programs.

“Most students studying abroad come from the largest three cities [Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir], but there is a growing interest in studying abroad in provinces such as Gaziantep, Konya, Kayseri, Eskişehir and Bursa in recent years. The subjects Turkish students prefer to study include business management, marketing, finance, medicine and engineering. Eastern European and Scandinavian countries are often the destination of those who cannot enter medicine, dentistry and engineering programs in Turkey,” said Deniz Akar, the general manager of IEFT Fairs Turkey, in a press release.

Some 4 million students study abroad worldwide, spending $150 billion a year, data says. The number of students studying abroad is expected to exceed 8 million by 2020.

China is the country with the highest number of students studying abroad. However, the world’s second-largest economy also aims to surpass the United States in terms of the number of foreign students the country attracts by 2020.

The countries Turkish students most often choose to study in are Britain with 30,000 Turkish students, the U.S. (25,000), Germany (10,000), France (4,000), Australia (3,500), Canada (3,000), Russia (1,500), China (1,000), Ukraine (1,000) and Italy (800).