An Interview with Dr. Ahmet Aydemir
To celebrate the International Day of Education (24th January) we caught up with Dr. Ahmet Aydemir, Academician at MLA College, to get his views on the importance of education.
Ahmet has recently joined MLA College as the Programme Lead for the Master of Business Administration degrees and is tutoring students undertaking the MSc Sustainable Maritime Operations and MSc Sustainability in Practice degrees. Read more about Ahmet here.
Hi Ahmet, thanks for taking the time to talk to us today. As you know, today marks the United Nation’s International Day of Education, what are your views on the importance of education?
The International Day of Education was founded four years ago to celebrate the role education plays in ensuring global peace and sustainable development. It is linked to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, especially SDG4: Quality Education, in its aim to ensure inclusive and accessible quality education and promote lifelong learning for all.
2023 is significant as it marks the halfway point for achieving the SDGs. Since 2020, we have been in the Decade of Action for sustainable development, however, there is still a long way to go to make the goals a reality.
When you look at today’s world, there are a lot of steps needed to be taken to ensure quality education is accessible to everyone. There is around one billion people in the world that have no access to education, more than 750 million adults are illiterate and almost 70 million children across the world are prevented from going to school each day.
Lack of access to education can be for a variety of reasons, such as individual hardships, circumstances of the physical environment or digital difficulties. That’s why numerous investments in different areas of education need to be made continuously to remedy these problems and make education accessible for all.
Quality education that is modern, relevant, and inclusive is an equaliser for the world. It makes sure that regardless of our status, background, ethnicity, religion etc., we become individuals that realise our potential and have the competency to not only help ourselves and our family but the whole world. The more individuals are educated, the more the world prospers. If a certain amount of people in the world are not educated, the whole world falls behind. This has an impact on economics, technology, health, and culture. Thus, everyone must be educated, and education must be at the front of all countries’ development plans.
The United Nation’s theme for this year is ‘To Invest in People, Prioritise Education’, how will education help people, the planet and prosperity for the future?
When we think of the five P’s of the SDGs (people, planet, prosperity, peace, partnership) all of them include the necessity of sustainability literacy. Education is the foremost method to creating this awareness.
Even though we live in a world that is divided, through education and partnerships, we can tackle many of the world’s problems together. Through education, we can become competent in addressing these problems and learn how to work collaboratively to do so.
We should also be aware that it’s not enough for us and our close circles to be educated and prosperous; we rely on others for all types of needs, such as health services and living in peace without war. We should thus strive so that our friends, family, colleagues, and everyone else in the world that may not have the opportunities that we have, have access to quality education.
Following awareness comes competency; having the knowledge to tackle current issues, such as gender inequality, the food and energy crisis and climate change, for example. It is only through lifelong learning and education that people can keep their skills updated and keep themselves in the job market within today’s digitalized and AI heavy environment while ensuring that they continue to protect the world, their societies, and the environment.
However, neither literacy nor competency are enough by themselves, we also need to consider the third and maybe the most important step; ownership. Even if we know why these issues are important and have the answers as to how to solve them, if we don’t take ownership of them, we will just rely on others to deal with these problems.
We all need to be aware of global issues and that the actions we take have an impact on not only ourselves, but our societies and the whole world. The world can only prosper if everyone on it prospers. Thus, we all need to take individual, organizational, and societal ownership of the world’s problems, and solve them collaboratively to ensure global prosperity.
MLA College delivers Education Beyond Borders; how does this help remove barriers to people accessing quality education?
MLA College provides education in such a way that people can access quality education no matter where they are in the world. It provides flexible and timely study options so that people can fit education around their work and life commitments and continue to develop knowledge and skills while still working.
MLA College also recognizes the number of disparities, equalities, and challenges individuals and minority groups face to access education. That’s why it has numerous scholarships and bursary schemes to support individuals with less means so that they can also access the provided education.
These schemes help create a levelling ground so that everyone can get competent enough to not only help their careers and businesses but also make sure they can create a better world through sustainability, digitalisation, and innovative technologies.
