Efforts Continue to Address Educational Injustice in Iran

In a proposed bill by the Ministries of Science and Health, emphasis has been placed on preserving four groups of student admission quotas. Is it possible to eliminate the remaining controversial quotas?

The head of Iran’s National Organization for Educational Testing proposed that, apart from regional quotas, war veterans, exceptional talents, and quotas aligned with the needs of underprivileged regions, all other quotas should be eliminated.

According to Ibrahim Khodaei, these are four quotas that have been mentioned in the “proposed bill.” This bill was prepared by the Ministries of Science and Health and has been sent by the government to the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution for decision-making.

Khodaei, speaking at a meeting of the Council for Islamicizing Universities and Educational Centers, emphasized that in this bill, “efforts have been made to address matters such as consolidating and optimizing quotas, creating balance in the scientific capacity of higher education admissions, considering scientific interests and gaining public confidence, establishing educational justice, supporting underprivileged regions, creating healthy competition, and similar matters.”

Based on the proposal of the two aforementioned ministries, native recruitment in the university entrance exam should be eliminated, and quotas should be considered “in a specific manner” based on the needs of provinces.

The bill also recommends that certain quotas, including those for war veterans, be considered as quotas exceeding university capacity.

Demand for “Fundamental Change”

Farzad Jahanbin, head of the Cultural and Student Affairs Deputy at Islamic Azad University, said at the meeting of the Council for Islamicizing Universities and Educational Centers: “It seems that many of the related problems will not be resolved except through fundamental changes in the assessment and admission system. The selection process should be delegated to universities while considering a specific minimum threshold for the exam.”

Saeed Reza Ameli, secretary of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, also called for reviewing the current process and said that more than thirty years have passed since the war ended and the statistical population of war veterans and combatants has declined.

He clarified: “With the decrease in the number of applicants for the mentioned quotas, the percentage of quota coverage should also be adjusted proportionally.”

Abdullah Jasbi, a member of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, also called for eliminating native recruitment because, in his view, with the expansion of public and private higher education centers in Iran, “the philosophical rationale for native recruitment at the provincial level has disappeared.”

He proposed that to establish educational justice, “past quotas” should be eliminated and “the process of implementing quotas should take on a different and certainly more limited form.”

Jasbi also called for “updating and revising the formula for war veterans’ quotas” and that a specific percentage of war veterans “be introduced to higher education centers as excess capacity beyond the entrance exam capacity.”

A Serious Problem for Iranian Higher Education

The discussion about quota students is not new and has fluctuated in recent years, gaining momentum briefly before subsiding.

One of the matters that attracted media attention was the criticism of Hamid Akbari, Deputy Minister of Education at the Ministry of Health, in August 2019. He severely criticized the quota situation for admission in medical fields, namely dentistry, arbitration, and medicine.

Source: DW