The Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) has released the 2024 edition of its "Higher Education Brain Drain Statistics" bulletin, showing the rate of brain drain among university graduates remained unchanged at 2% compared to the previous year.
The data revealed that the brain drain rate stood at 1.6% among women and 2.4% among men.
Among state university graduates, the brain drain rate held steady at 1.7%, while it slightly declined from 4.5% to 4.3% for graduates of foundation universities. Within the latter group, those who studied on full scholarships had the highest brain drain rate at 8.3%.
By field of study, graduates of information and communication technologies led with a brain drain rate of 6.7%, followed by engineering, manufacturing and construction at 4.4%, and natural sciences, mathematics and statistics at 2.7%.
At the program level, the highest rates were recorded in molecular biology and genetics (15%), business engineering (10.8%), electronics engineering (9.6%), mathematics engineering (9.5%), and bioengineering (9.4%).
The top three destination countries for graduates were the US (19.6%), Germany (19.4%), and the UK (11.3%).
Among those moving to the US, most came from electrical and electronics engineering programs, while computer engineering graduates favored Germany and the UK.
When sorted by language of instruction, French-speaking graduates had the highest brain drain rate at 9.9%, followed by English, German, and Russian instruction. (NÖ/VK)
