The Islamic Republic, Brain Drain, and Denial of Reality

​​​​​​​Brain drain from the Islamic Republic of Iran intensifies with each passing year. The exodus of educated individuals and specialists darkens Iran’s future in terms of productive workforce capacity.

Brain drain from the Islamic Republic of Iran intensifies with each passing year. Responsible institutions in the Islamic Republic, desperate to solve this problem, have complicated sociological investigations of the issue by presenting contradictory and often inaccurate statistics and information. The exodus of educated individuals and specialists continuously darkens Iran’s future from the perspective of productive workforce capacity.

Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees stated in its latest report on the educational status of asylum seekers in the country that in 2018, more than 47 percent of Iranian asylum seekers identified themselves as having university-level education. Nearly 40 percent of Iranian asylum seekers also held a high school diploma.

According to this report, only 9 percent of Iranians had completed their first secondary school diploma, and not even one person among thousands of Iranian asylum seekers was illiterate.

The release of this information has once again brought the issue of brain drain from Iran—which has for years been the focus of numerous discussions in Iranian academic and scientific circles—into the spotlight. On Saturday, August 17, The Independent reported, citing Bahram Salwati, a member of the academic staff of Iran’s Institute for Population Studies: “30 percent of Iran’s population is inclined to migrate.”

Salwati has stated elsewhere, without citing sources, that there are currently 260 million migrants in the world, of whom 16 million are Iranian.

These statistics, even if not 100 percent verified and definitive, still reveal only a small corner of the brain drain problem in Iran, about which experts have been warning for years regarding its unfavorable consequences for Iran’s economy and development today and tomorrow.

Regarding the statistics of educated Iranian asylum seekers in Germany, it should be noted that only a very small portion of Iranian graduates who cannot find legal migration routes to other countries enter European countries as asylum seekers, while the queue of migration applicants in front of the embassies of Canada, the United States, Australia, and some countries in need of specialized labor inside Iran and neighboring countries grows longer every day.

On August 13, 2010, Baqer Larijani, chairman of the eleventh scientific olympiad of medical science students of the Islamic Republic of Iran, announced at this olympiad’s meeting that 150 to 180 thousand educated specialists migrate from the country each year, and a serious program must be drafted to utilize this large capacity within the country.

However, after approximately eleven years since this issue was raised, the government has still not drafted or announced any program to create facilities that could reduce the escalating migration.

Many government officials and experts close to the government denied the statistics presented by Baqer Larijani, which were based on international figures, while at the same time, for example, the Research Center of the Islamic Consultative Assembly announced that in 2010, among those who preferred migration to remaining in Iran, 60 thousand were among the elite, many of whom held prestigious positions in international scientific olympiads.

Khomeini and the Priority of Believers over Specialists

Brain drain from Iran actually began with the founding of the Islamic Republic. Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, always emphasized that religious faith transcends expertise. This perspective led to situations where, for example, a simple clerk could become the director of a hospital where dozens of specialized physicians were serving the people. Most of these physicians left the country in the early years of the Islamic Republic’s rule. The migration of specialists in other fields has never ceased over the past four decades.

The migration process peaked again after the suppression of the Green Movement in 2009. In 2010, the International Monetary Fund announced in a report that Iran ranks first among 91 developing or underdeveloped countries in the world in terms of elite migration. However, officials of the Islamic Republic again called these statistics exaggerated and downplayed the migration problem.

Bahram Salwati, a member of the academic staff of Iran’s Institute for Population Studies, was one of these officials. On December 30, 2018, while denying international statistics, he said: “Iran, contrary to popular belief, does not have the highest rate of brain drain in the world; rather, after India, the Philippines, the United States, and Canada, it holds the fourth position in this regard.”

The Iranian academic official claimed that even two migration-receiving countries, Canada and the United States, suffer more from brain drain than Iran. He made no reference whatsoever to the ratio of the United States’ population of 320 million and Iran’s population of 85 million. The statements of this academic official from a year ago contradict what has recently been published about him.

The Islamic Republic News Agency wrote in 2018, quoting Salwati: “In 2018, the number of emigrant students from Iran was 12,700 people, and currently Iranian students rank twelfth among foreign students in the United States.”

Even if this information is accurate, the migration of educated individuals still has a destructive impact on Iran’s future. The experience of the past forty years has shown that due to the lack of job opportunities, low wages, and unfavorable cultural and social conditions, the vast majority of Iranian students and specialists who migrate abroad to continue their education do not return to Iran, except for short trips to visit relatives.

The Vice President’s Denial

There is no shortage of deniers of the brain drain problem among Iran’s government officials. Sorena Sattari, the vice president for science and technology and head of the National Elites Foundation, on August 20, 2019, while dismissing international statistics published in Western media, told Quds Online: “Iran is currently not among the first countries in terms of student and elite migration.”

At a time when the queues of Iranian applicants for migration in front of embassies and representative offices of European countries, the United States, Canada, and Australia are growing in countries neighboring Iran, the vice president added: “The process of elite and academic migration has reversed, and the return of elites to the country to work in knowledge-based companies and startups has increased.”

Simultaneously with the vice president for science, Hossein Salarieh, deputy of the National Elites Foundation, also rejected the international statistics regarding the annual departure of 120 to 180 thousand students and graduates of Iranian universities, arguing that “those providing these statistics do not clarify what they mean by elite. Should every university graduate or anyone who leaves the country for work or to continue their education be considered an elite?”

Without citing a source, Salarieh said: “The latest international reports show that Iran is not only not among countries with high migration rates, but the number of Iranian migrants is lower than the global average.”

He accused “some media outlets and circles” of spreading despair in society by presenting inaccurate statistics, so that people believe that every valuable person who could potentially do work for the country is emigrating from Iran.”

However, this official subsequently clarified that in the ten-year period between 2008 and 2018, 25 to 30 percent of the country’s students and specialists left Iran.

11 Billion Tomans Cost of Education Per Iranian

The migration of graduates, according to international source estimates, costs the Iranian people billions of dollars every year.

On February 28, 2019, Amir Vaezi Ashtiani, an economic expert, announced in a conversation with the Islamic Republic’s state news agency that educating each person from elementary school through a doctoral degree costs the Iranian people approximately 11 billion tomans.

He said: “The benefit that Europe, America, and scientific centers like NASA derive from Iranian specialists is undoubtedly the result of the incompetence of senior officials of the country in the realm of scientific and economic policymaking.”

From the perspective of this economic expert: “It is clear that developed countries attract educated elites from developing countries.”

In other words, what the Iranian government and families spend over the years in the scientific and cultural development of their children ends up in the pockets of countries that have created favorable conditions to attract talent.

The International Monetary Fund in 2018 identified unemployment, the low income level of elites, financial and administrative shortcomings, lack of scientific facilities, and political and social instability as the most important reasons for brain drain from Iran.

The migration of elites has intensified since last year following the United States’ withdrawal from the JCPOA and the reimposition of sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

According to reports coming from Iran, foreign language schools are currently filled with specialists seeking migration. Since strict requirements apply in Iran for taking the English language test, many individuals, after learning the language, are forced to travel to neighboring countries, including the Republic of Azerbaijan, at considerable expense to take this test.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, preoccupied with mostly self-inflicted crises, lacks the capacity to solve the migration problem of elites. A country that enjoys a prominent position among most neighboring countries in terms of the number of universities, students, and university graduates, freely gives the best fruits of its knowledge to those same countries that it sometimes considers its enemies.

Source: DW