Country Spotlight

 Because of its population boom in the early 80s followed by one of the fastest drops in fertility rates over a period of two decades, Iran has the shortest demographic window of opportunity in the region but one with the potential to yield the greatest dividend. Significant increases in school enrollment rates over the last two decades have gained the country considerable growth in educational attainment rates. However, despite attempts in rapidly expanding the number of public and private universities there is still a very limited number of spots against a rising tide of high school graduates. And with this there has evolved a rigorous and highly exclusionary matriculation process.

Tracking

At the end of the first year of high school when most students in Iran are at the age of 15, students are evaluated and placed accordingly into three separate tracks in which they must continue for the rest of their high school career: Nazari which is the theoretical or academic curriculum, Fanni-Herfie or Technical and Vocational Education and Kardanesh, which is a more basic skills training that mostly takes place in an actual workplace. Only students who are allowed to pursue the theoretical track are allowed to then pursue a university education after graduation, though they too must also then pass a nationwide entrance exam at the end of their high school track which represents yet another exclusionary step in the process.

Data suggests that nearly one third of youth are excluded from the preferred academic curriculum. In fact, a large number of youth who do not enter this desired track drop out of school completely.

University Selection

Nonetheless being allowed to pursue the academic track still does not guarantee entrance into a university; in fact few are able to. Of the 1.5 million students who take the academic track and must take the nationwide entrance exam, called concour, each year only 20% score high enough to gain entry into a public or private university. Young Iranians are only too familiar with the category known as rofozehehaye concour (concour rejects). This majority within the theoretical track high school graduate are deemed as ‘losers’ and face difficult prospects in the labor market as such.

School to Work Transition

After completion of schooling Iranian youth with graduate degrees face significantly high unemployment rates—at approximately 60-80% among secondary school graduates.

Economic growth in recent years (2000-2005) has favored the least educated relative to those with some secondary education and above, and men relative to women. Tertiary education once prized for reducing the risk of unemployment to almost none, now seems to have a much lower effect due to a rapid expansion of higher education and decline in its quality which has become too reliant on rote memorization and does not provide the skills needed in the private sector—a problem that has become characteristic of educational shortcomings across the region.