Prevalence of vocational secondary education and its relationship between development: Turkey application

ABSTRACT PREVALENCE OF VOCATIONAL SECONDARY EDUCATION AND ITS RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DEVELOPMENT: TURKEY APPLICATION ÇALIŞKAN, Adnan Ph. D. Dissertation, Department of Economics Thesis Advisor: Associate Prof.Dr. Mustafa DURMAN June 2015, 143 pages With the process of globalization, the world numerous of changes have been experinenced in economic, social cultural areas and as a result of rapid changes in technology demand for skilled labour have increased. Cultivating the skilled workforce that play a major role in the development of the country depend on education in particular on vocational education. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate vocational education all over again in Turkey. The aim of this study is to determine the relationship between the vocational secondary education in Turkey for the period of 1975-2011 and the level of economic development. GDP was taken as dependent variable in this research while number of primary school, secondary-school, vocational secondary school, higher education students, and the share allocated to ministry of education, representing educational budget expenditures, were taken as independent variables. In this study, whether there is a positive relationship between the economic development and vocational training in Turkey has been tested by Granger casuality test and regression analysis. The results of econometric analysis showed that vocational secondary education is the cause of GDP. Therefore, it was determined that vocational secondary education contribute to the economic development level in Turkey. Ampirical results of this completed study expresses that in the long-term, from the perspective student numbers the investments in education is in relationship with the development of country. In addition, as for the content of the study based on the data obtained from the regression analysis it has been determined that a unit increase in the secondary education results an increase approximately 0.528729 percent in GDP. As a result of econometric analysis, it was found that there is a positive relationship between the vocational secondary education and economic growth / development. Keywords: Education, Human Capital, Vocational Education, Economic Development