Students attend a lecture at Azerbaijan Medical University in Baku. Photo CC: Mohammed Sadegmo / ATU-AMU / Flickr. Some rights reserved.
Azerbaijan is losing its educated young people. I know from personal experience; my late father, an academic, insisted on sending me to study abroad. 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. He was frustrated with corruption and the falling quality of education – and when the former minister of education openly forced him into taking bribes.
That’s just how things worked, but he decided he’d had enough. Threats from the ministry that he would lose his position as university rector, were the final straw. 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. “Connections” and “gifts” didn’t have the same weight there.
