The role and the importance of vocational and technical education in the economic development of Turkey

According to the human capital theorists, for the implementation of socioeconomic development, the factor that satisfies growth and structural change is human capital rather than physical capital. One of the most important components of human capital is education. However, it is a fact that all levels of education do not effect economic development equally. The importance of technical and vocational education increases with the economic development. When general education forms an infrastructure at the beginning stages of development, in new industrializing nations vocational education stands in the forefront. In a sense, vocational and technical education is an accelerator for economic development. In developing countries such as Turkey, special importance has to be given to vocational and technical education for raising qualified workforce. In this respect Turkey has been showing great effort for a while. Turkey, determined to be a full member of the European Union for years, has to evaluate the view of the union to vocational and technical education well. In this respect, Turkey has to analyze the countries with different education systems carefully and create the appropriate system. The basic purpose of this study is investigating direction and magnitude of the relationship of vocational and technical education with economic development in Turkey. In the study, the relationship between Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and per capita GDP tested with number of students in primary, secondary, tertiary, as well as vocational schools in Turkey for 1923?2005 in a VAR model. According to the results, it is found that real GDP or per capita GDP and educational variables are cointegrated. It is also discovered, different directions of Granger causality between different levels of education and GDP or per capita GDP exist. Similar results are achieved from error variance decomposition and impulse response analyses related to the role of education especially vocational and technical in explaining growth.