Minister admits loss of 25% of professors to emigration

Against official denials in the recent past that universities in Iran are facing a brain drain crisis, the country’s Minister of Science, Research and Technology Hossein Simaee Saraf has admitted that 25% of professors have emigrated over the past few years and has described the figures as “worrying”.

At a meeting with Basij students but without providing full details of the period of time in question, Simaee Saraf revealed that the emigration of professors “was the cause of the decline of the universities’ and students’ academic performance”.

A ministry official later clarified to the Iran Students’ News Agency (ISNA) that during the past two to five years, mostly young faculty members in the technical, engineering and basic sciences had left universities and research centres affiliated with the ministry – “and some have also emigrated”, he was quoted as saying.

Simaee Saraf had said that if the trend continues professors who leave “will be replaced by people who may have weaker qualifications”. The minister also told a meeting of university presidents in September, at the beginning of the academic year, that academic migration was rising.

The Jam-e Jam newspaper, affiliated with the state-controlled Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), published an article in September 2023, coinciding with the reopening of universities after the nationwide protests of 2022, which claimed that the migration of university professors abroad had not reached “crisis level”.

Iran’s Vice-president for Science, Technology and Knowledge-Based Economy Rouhollah Dehghani Firouzabadi said in November 2023 that emigration data were “not alarming at all”, despite thousands of medical professionals leaving the country in recent years.

Over the past two years, almost 10,000 doctors applied for good-standing certificates required by some destination countries, according to Hossein-Ali Shahriari, head of the Iranian parliament’s health commission.

However, President Ebrahim Raisi argued that emigration by doctors could be “reversed”, saying “decent jobs” were awaiting those who returned.

In February this year, Mohammad-Reza Zafarghandi, secretary general of the Iran Medical Council, said 80% of Iran’s medical students were thinking of leaving the country.

Exposed by international rankings

Official statistics indicate that over the past two decades, more than 6 million Iranians have emigrated. Citing these figures, the government-affiliated Rokna news agency reported that around 40% of Iranian migrants hold higher education degrees, and the emigration of educated women has seen a “significant increase”.

One Iranian academic in Tehran recently noted that with the release of international university rankings, “the regime can no longer hide the exodus of academics and decline in the student-teacher ratio in Iranian universities, which is an important measure in such rankings. So they need to explain why the figures are so bad”.

Yousef Hojjat, acting head of Tarbiat Modares University in Tehran, was quoted by official media as saying that due to “low financial credibility” the global academic rankings of all Iranian universities had declined, referring to the 2024 Shanghai Rankings released last month.

While the University of Tehran ranked between 301 and 400 in 2022, it dropped into the 401-500 range in 2023 and 2024.

Another top university, Sharif University of Technology, dropped from the 601-700 range to 701-800, while Amirkabir University of Technology fell from 601-700 in 2022 to 901-1000.

Economic reasons

Rahman Zandi, an associate professor at Isfahan University, told Resalat News that while emigration of professors was not new, “it is more visible than in the past, because the livelihood problems of the professors have intensified”.

In reports in state media on 22 November, Simaee Saraf cited “occupational, economic [and] socio-political” reasons for emigration, pointing to economic problems as the main reason for the emigration of professors. The minister added: “Some do not even intend to return.”

He pointed out that the income of university professors in “our neighbouring countries” was between US$4,000 and US$7,000, whereas salaries of full professors in Iran are around US$1,000, with young professors earning as little as US$300 a month.

Simaee Saraf noted that while senior professors may lack the motivation to emigrate, the stark disparity forces many younger professors and academics who face financial pressures to seek better opportunities abroad to sustain their livelihoods.

To address the issue, the science ministry has formed a dedicated task force aimed at mitigating economic challenges, including the provision of housing for academics, Simaee Saraf announced.

Purges and unrest

While the minister sought to emphasise economic reasons behind the decline in the academic ranking of Iranian universities and the emigration of professors, Iranian academics, speaking on condition of anonymity, point to the purges of academics in 2022-23 that took place during the widespread campus unrest in 2022-23 that followed Mahsa Amini’s death in police custody after her arrest in September 2022 for allegedly breaching hijab rules. Academics were ostensibly targeted for supporting student protesters.

In September 2023, the reformist-leaning Etemad newspaper published a list of 52 professors dismissed from Iranian universities, indicating that another wave of dismissals began with the start of Raisi’s administration in 2021 and intensified during the nationwide protests in Iran in 2022.

Many others have been suspended. While the government has publicised the reinstatement of some professors, many others have been unable to return, some of them facing charges related to the 2022-23 unrest.

Academics told University World News “Islamisation” of many university programmes in the humanities had also led to an exodus of academics who used to teach such subjects.

Academic migration in Iran comes as the country is also grappling with Western economic sanctions over Iran’s nuclear programme and economic struggles. The country’s inflation rate has been above 40% for the past four years.

Geopolitical tensions and fears that Iran, which backs anti-Israel and anti-US groups in the region, could be drawn into a broader conflict have been another factor emerging this year that has led to uncertainty about the economic and political situation.