Iran has lost 12,000 university professors over the past decade, a former deputy science minister said on Friday, highlighting the rapid unraveling of the country’s higher-education workforce.
Iran’s academic system had been confined by shifting governance structures that weakened its capacity, Gholamreza Zarifian told an annual assembly of university instructors.
“In the past ten years, 12,000 university professors have left Iran, and 60 percent of them did so in the past four years,” he said.
Vetting pressures
“These days, we lose one university professor every week,” Ebrahim Azadegan of Sharif University of Technology said in an interview with KhabarOnline last month.
The latest wave of departures has sharpened criticism of vetting rules that academics say have disqualified candidates over personal matters.
Karan Abri-Nia, secretary of the Iranian University Professors’ Trade Union, said in late October that at least 1,500 engineering and technical faculty members at leading institutions had emigrated in the past five years. “I see migration as a wound on the body of our universities, one that keeps deepening,” he said.
Between the 2018-19 and 2022-23 academic years, Abri-Nia added, about a quarter of the 6,000 faculty members in core engineering departments at top universities left the country. At the University of Tehran, he said about ten professors in engineering mechanics either took early retirement to continue work abroad or went on sabbatical and did not return.
Broader professional flight
The academic exodus reflects a wider flight of skilled workers, including doctors and nurses seeking opportunities in the United Arab Emirates, Oman and elsewhere. Medical associations in Iran have warned repeatedly of a growing strain on the healthcare system and the risk of future breakdown if departures continue.
Officials have recently authorized passport and immigration police to monitor elite migration in coordination with the National Elites Foundation, which operates under the presidency, a sign of growing concern over the accelerating loss of talent.
The steep decline in faculty numbers points to a structural crisis for Iran’s universities as they face shrinking resources, political constraints and persistent economic pressures.
