Turkish university employment rates show medicine leads at 95.5%

Recent data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) regarding 2025 university graduate employment shows a general registered employment rate of 73.9% for undergraduate graduates. Medicine leads with the highest employment rate at 95.5%, followed by special education teaching (90.8%), aviation electricity and electronics (89.9%), mathematical engineering (89.8%), and nursing (89.8%).

In terms of speed to employment, speech and language therapy graduates find work fastest, averaging 2.4 months. Other rapid fields include medicine (3.9 months), special education teaching (4.4 months), and pharmacy (4.6 months). Conversely, the employment rate for associate degree graduates saw a decline from 66.4% in 2024 to 65.7% in 2025.

Academic analysis suggests that while a university diploma still provides an economic advantage, the returns are becoming more heterogeneous. Professor Oytun Meçik notes that the gap between diploma attainment and high-paying jobs is widening because the number of high-quality, high-productivity jobs is not keeping pace with the increasing number of graduates. While higher education graduates still earn more on average than those with lower education levels, the earnings advantage has decreased from 2.7 times to 1.9 times since 2006.