The Statistical Center of Iran, in its “Report on the Social and Cultural Situation of Iran, Spring 2023,” announced that in the academic year 2022-2023, over 556,000 children between the ages of 15 and 17 dropped out of high school, including 295,000 boys and 261,000 girls. This statistic does not include those who have dropped out of high school altogether. Economic deprivation and poverty are the main reasons for this situation.
Furthermore, according to the statement by Masoumeh Najafi Pazuki, the Deputy of Elementary Education at the regime’s Ministry of Education, in the current year, 160,000 individuals have not registered for elementary school and have remained out of education. Although she claims that this figure has remained constant over the past five years, the statistical report indicates an increasing trend.
The country’s student population, from grade one to grade twelve in the current academic year, has been evaluated at 16 million individuals, which is close to 19 percent of the total population of the country.
These figures were at 15,159,000 and 15,376,00 in 2020 and 2021, respectively. Considering the ratio of the number of students to the total population of the country, this statistic indicates a decline in the enrollment of students.
The country’s student population has also experienced a declining trend in recent years. Approximately 3.2 million individuals were students in the academic year 2023-2024 throughout the country. The percentage of male and female students is 51 and 49 percent, respectively.
In the 2023 university entrance exam, 1,119,436 individuals participated, of which only about 583,000 individuals were able to choose their major. The competition in the university entrance exam is only for fifteen percent of the country’s capacity, and the rest are accepted into universities without a nationwide exam.
The peak of the country’s student population was in the academic year 2014-2015, with more than 4.8 million students. Now, after almost a decade, it has experienced a decrease of 33 percent. The country’s student population had an upward trend until the mid-2000s since the establishment of Tehran University in 1934.
The imbalanced growth of specialized fields, particularly in the doctoral level, and the prevalence of commercial relationships that did not match the university facilities and the country’s job market needs, laid the foundation for a crisis in the education system and led to negative social and economic consequences in subsequent periods.
The imbalance between the education system and the job market needs, and the disregard of this issue, have overshadowed some of the positive aspects of increasing the student population and resulted in a reverse trend since the second half of the 2010s. Now, the number of university students and individuals with at least a bachelor’s degree has decreased. The employment crisis for graduates and the high rate of emigration are important factors contributing to this negligence towards education.
The significant decline in the popularity of universities (from 2 percent of the country’s population to 0.4 percent) and the increasing number of school dropouts pose a serious threat to the sustainable and comprehensive development of the country. Moreover, this phenomenon has serious negative consequences for the job market, the survival of non-profit higher education institutions, the level of awareness in the country, and the social status of universities and the higher education system in Iran.
The mutual impact of the decrease in the student population and the high rate of emigration by specialists and individuals with university degrees will result in a shortage of skilled professionals in the coming years, necessitating the import of skilled labor from abroad.
The decline in the specialized expertise of professors, especially in technical and medical fields, has compromised the quality of university-educated professionals and created difficulties in their employment in the job market.
The Iranian regime, for political and ideological reasons, insists on disregarding scientific and specialized criteria. This reverse trend, which began during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and reached its peak during the Ebrahim Raisi administration, has expanded with the self-interest of the institutions under the control of the Supreme Leader’s apparatus, where regime loyalists are appointed as professors without merit. Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the regime, recently called for disregarding the requirement of publishing articles in reputable international journals for the promotion of university professors.
The situation in schools is even worse. Inefficiency in the education system, outdated curriculum content, lack of teaching methods based on fostering creativity and initiative, commercialization of education, the proliferation of private schools, and the systematic injection of religiosity through religious teachers have lowered the quality of education. The average grade of high school students last year was eleven out of twenty.
The expansion of profit-oriented majors and the focus of universities on selling degrees to secure financial resources, along with the influence of the university entrance exam mafia, have increased the role of wealth in obtaining seats in the country’s top universities.
According to official statistics, over 80 percent of the top three thousand candidates in various fields in the university entrance exam come from the top three deciles of income in society. This upward trend in recent years has effectively made money the determining factor for studying at reputable universities in the country.
The role of wealth is not only seen in classes, exam preparation courses, and studying at private schools but also in the performance of universities. All top universities in the country have special programs that accept students without requiring the university entrance exam but with the payment of tuition fees.
Unfortunately, not only is there no clear outlook for addressing or mitigating the multiple education crises in Iran, but the future prospects are also bleak. With the continuation of this situation, specialized, professional, and comprehensive educational structures will suffer serious damages, disrupting the path of comprehensive development of the country and the creation of human capital.
