Turkish-German access to higher education: an historical and democratic theory analysis, 1960–2010

Abstract

This article looks at access to higher education in Germany. For a number of reasons, explained in this article, higher education is presently an elite system that privileges ethnic Germans while preventing Turkish-Germans from gaining sufficient access into academe. If Germany is to become a fully functioning multicultural democracy with equal rights for all it will have to revamp its higher education system so that Turkish-Germans can gain better access to such institutions and consequently feel included into the German social and political system.

Keywords:

• Turkish-Germans
• higher education access
• democratic theory
• tracking
• ethnicity

Notes

1. A recent example is Thilo Sarrazin’s (a German politician and banker) criticism in his bestselling 2010 book Deutschland schafft sich ab (Germany Does Away With Itself) where he argues that Muslims, such as Turkish-Germans, are ‘dumbing down’ Germany.