Selling education abroad to Turkey
Güncelleme Tarihi:
by Damaris Kremida
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Nisan 18, 2009 00:00
ISTANBUL - Canadian native Dawn Brondahl Çimen has been organizing education fairs accross Turkey for the last two years. She hopes to bring Turkish students hungry for an education overseas in contact with school representatives from around the world
Thousands of high-school students from Turkey crowded the Hilton Convention Center earlier this month, and they weren’t there to listen to a pop star. Turkey’s youth are eagerly looking to get an education overseas making them one of the university education market’s prime targets.
The woman behind the International Education Fairs of Turkey (IEFT), Canadian Dawn Brondahl Çimen said she is overwhelmed by the response of students in Turkey and excited about the possibilities she sees at this fair taking place across Turkey twice a year.
Çimen, who is IEFT’s coordinator and international marketing manager, said she couldn’t have imagined a better life for herself.
"Turkey was one of those places that after University I came through, I backpacked through and I just fell in love with," she told the Hürriyet Daily News at the IEFT fair at the end of March. "I didn’t ever think it would be possible for me to live here not for any reason except it was too good to be true."
No stranger to what it is like to be an ambassador for one’s country and university, Çimen came to Turkey on the other side of education fair as a representative of LSE Language Studies Canada two years ago. The coordinator of IEFT at the time was leaving, and the managers of the fair approached her.
"They offered me a position and I said, ’I’ll think about it,’ but in my head I was like ’Yes! I’m moving here tomorrow,’" said Çimen. "And within two months I had packed up my life in Toronto and moved here. And really I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world. I just love Turkey."
Education for sale
This year’s spring IEFT was held between March 25 and April 4. A caravan of up to 168 university and school representatives spread over 150 booths caravanned from Northern Cyprus to Istanbul, Ankara, Adana and finally Izmir.
The energy at the Istanbul fair was palpable as conversations buzzed throughout the Hilton Convention Center. "People are really excited about this market because the students are so excited about education," said Çimen.
The IEFT coordinator explained that Turkey is full of bright students whose potential goes untapped. "You look at the exam results for undergraduates alone and just the fact that so many people take exams just to get into universities, where there is only place for 400,000 students," she said, "when over a million students take the exam and most of them are qualified for university."
She described them as true consumers of education and noted that one of her Turkish colleagues has three graduate level degrees. "Back home that is something extraordinary," said Çimen. "That’s a lot of education."
Selling a country
Çimen explained that the challenge of the school representatives is to first sell the country they are located in as a good place to live and study. In a room full of schools from 24 countries this can be challenging and at the end of the day representatives from the same country bond together in a worthy display of camaraderie despite the competition.
"The cool part about this is that so many of the schools have to sell a country as a destination before they sell a program especially here where it’s so international," she said. "So I find that schools that are possibly competitors in their educational fields are helping each other."
She said a common sight is students coming up to one of them asking about a program and the representative sending them to another program of the same country.
"They know each other and because they are together in a foreign land it binds them together and gives them a communal feeling," she said. "They are banning together to sell a country essentially."
Çimen noted that in Turkey the choice of a school is a family affair, as opposed to countries in the West where the choice belongs to the student. "The families get involved here too which is really interesting," she said. "It’s really different from the European market that way, where a student makes the decision individually."
"Here they’ll bring their mom or they’ll bring their uncle who worked in Russia and knows the university and it’s all about somebody who knows somebody," she explained.
"They’ll say, ’My neighbor recommended that I go to the UK because she has a son who lives there.’ So it’s almost as if through the contact there they’ll be safe or they’ll know somebody." But, Çimen said it is typical of Turkey where people choose services based on recommendations from friends and family. "That’s Turkey. Everything exists by word of mouth. It’s frustrating for newcomers but fun when you get into the system," she said.
This makes the role of agents in helping to select a school even more important in Turkey. "It’s a trust issue É they’ll go to the agent with their families so they can speak to someone who is on the ground floor and has a connection with that country," she explained. "So even if a student is away the family will still have the connection with the agency to call them upÉ and they speak the same language."
Çimen described how a mother and daughter approached her at a booth before she moved to Turkey and after talking about education possibilities in Canada the mother said to her: "You are always welcome in my home," to which Çimen responded, "Well you are always welcome in my home too." "I was such a newbie," said Çimen with a chuckle. "Sure enough a few months later they called me from the airport in Toronto and ended up staying with me."
Stories like these illustrate how important it is for the families to know where their children are going and who will be on the other side to greet them. "It’s really a trust issue," said Çimen.
The woman behind the International Education Fairs of Turkey (IEFT), Canadian Dawn Brondahl Çimen said she is overwhelmed by the response of students in Turkey and excited about the possibilities she sees at this fair taking place across Turkey twice a year.
Çimen, who is IEFT’s coordinator and international marketing manager, said she couldn’t have imagined a better life for herself.
"Turkey was one of those places that after University I came through, I backpacked through and I just fell in love with," she told the Hürriyet Daily News at the IEFT fair at the end of March. "I didn’t ever think it would be possible for me to live here not for any reason except it was too good to be true."
No stranger to what it is like to be an ambassador for one’s country and university, Çimen came to Turkey on the other side of education fair as a representative of LSE Language Studies Canada two years ago. The coordinator of IEFT at the time was leaving, and the managers of the fair approached her.
"They offered me a position and I said, ’I’ll think about it,’ but in my head I was like ’Yes! I’m moving here tomorrow,’" said Çimen. "And within two months I had packed up my life in Toronto and moved here. And really I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world. I just love Turkey."
Education for sale
This year’s spring IEFT was held between March 25 and April 4. A caravan of up to 168 university and school representatives spread over 150 booths caravanned from Northern Cyprus to Istanbul, Ankara, Adana and finally Izmir.
The energy at the Istanbul fair was palpable as conversations buzzed throughout the Hilton Convention Center. "People are really excited about this market because the students are so excited about education," said Çimen.
The IEFT coordinator explained that Turkey is full of bright students whose potential goes untapped. "You look at the exam results for undergraduates alone and just the fact that so many people take exams just to get into universities, where there is only place for 400,000 students," she said, "when over a million students take the exam and most of them are qualified for university."
She described them as true consumers of education and noted that one of her Turkish colleagues has three graduate level degrees. "Back home that is something extraordinary," said Çimen. "That’s a lot of education."
Selling a country
Çimen explained that the challenge of the school representatives is to first sell the country they are located in as a good place to live and study. In a room full of schools from 24 countries this can be challenging and at the end of the day representatives from the same country bond together in a worthy display of camaraderie despite the competition.
"The cool part about this is that so many of the schools have to sell a country as a destination before they sell a program especially here where it’s so international," she said. "So I find that schools that are possibly competitors in their educational fields are helping each other."
She said a common sight is students coming up to one of them asking about a program and the representative sending them to another program of the same country.
"They know each other and because they are together in a foreign land it binds them together and gives them a communal feeling," she said. "They are banning together to sell a country essentially."
Çimen noted that in Turkey the choice of a school is a family affair, as opposed to countries in the West where the choice belongs to the student. "The families get involved here too which is really interesting," she said. "It’s really different from the European market that way, where a student makes the decision individually."
"Here they’ll bring their mom or they’ll bring their uncle who worked in Russia and knows the university and it’s all about somebody who knows somebody," she explained.
"They’ll say, ’My neighbor recommended that I go to the UK because she has a son who lives there.’ So it’s almost as if through the contact there they’ll be safe or they’ll know somebody." But, Çimen said it is typical of Turkey where people choose services based on recommendations from friends and family. "That’s Turkey. Everything exists by word of mouth. It’s frustrating for newcomers but fun when you get into the system," she said.
This makes the role of agents in helping to select a school even more important in Turkey. "It’s a trust issue É they’ll go to the agent with their families so they can speak to someone who is on the ground floor and has a connection with that country," she explained. "So even if a student is away the family will still have the connection with the agency to call them upÉ and they speak the same language."
Çimen described how a mother and daughter approached her at a booth before she moved to Turkey and after talking about education possibilities in Canada the mother said to her: "You are always welcome in my home," to which Çimen responded, "Well you are always welcome in my home too." "I was such a newbie," said Çimen with a chuckle. "Sure enough a few months later they called me from the airport in Toronto and ended up staying with me."
Stories like these illustrate how important it is for the families to know where their children are going and who will be on the other side to greet them. "It’s really a trust issue," said Çimen.