The journalist Emin Milli was 26 when he came up with the “Gelecek Ozu Gelmeyecek” campaign, calling on universities in Baku to send 5,000 Azerbaijani students every year to study abroad. When entrenched cronyism, corruption and nepotism are business as usual, does hard work and hard study count for anything? Under these circumstances, many citizens would happily seek a better life elsewhere, and the educated ones are no exception. Letting go broadens the mindĪzerbaijan is undergoing a protracted economic crisis, which its authoritarian Aliyev regime is having difficulty tackling. The average price tag for an “A” was around $300 while Jafar was an undergraduate student between 20. Jafar and a handful of other students refused to pay bribes for grades. Aynur realised that the next six years she would spend there were a waste of time.Īynur recalls how some of the professors teaching at the law faculty even threatened students with raising the final price for passing exams unless their students started behaving in class. Students were often humiliated by their professors and corruption was rampant. Despite being accepted to the prestigious Baku State University to study law, her hopes were quickly crushed. But I always considered myself among the lucky ones, certainly compared to my friend Aynur Jafar. Things weren’t ideal, but I didn’t experience corruption, and my teachers seemed more driven by teaching classes than taking bribes. When entrenched corruption and nepotism are business as usual, does hard work and hard study count for anything? In 6th grade, I was transferred to a Turkish lyceum from where I went to pursue my studies in Turkey and the United Kingdom. By the time I was halfway through primary school, Azerbaijan became an independent state, and we watched how quickly my teachers of Russian and Jewish descent were replaced by Azerbaijani teachers who barely knew neither Russian nor the subject they were supposed to teach.
My father graduated high school in his small village with a gold medal, aced university and went on to pursue his graduate studies in Moscow. “Connections” and “gifts” didn’t have the same weight there. He resigned and transferred himself to Suleyman Demirel University in Isparta, Turkey, where he continued teaching economics and civil engineering until his death in 2012. Threats from the ministry that he would lose his position as university rector, were the final straw. That’s just how things worked, but he decided he’d had enough. He was frustrated with corruption and the falling quality of education – and when the former minister of education openly forced him into taking bribes. He encouraged my application to universities in Turkey and shortly after I left to study International Relations in Ankara, my dad gathered his documents and in a sign of protest left our native Azerbaijan to teach in Turkey as well. I know from personal experience my late father, an academic, insisted on sending me to study abroad. Some rights reserved.Īzerbaijan is losing its educated young people. Photo CC: Mohammed Sadegmo / ATU-AMU / Flickr. Students attend a lecture at Azerbaijan Medical University in Baku.
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