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.
Average monthly incomes now stand near $200, leaving millions unable to keep pace with food inflation. Many respondents said basic protein disappeared from their tables months ago.
“Our daily cost for five people is about 30,000,000 rials (around $27), not even counting meat, oil or rice,” one respondent said. “Our table has not just shrunk, it has been wiped out,” the message said.
Another described a timeline of disappearing foods: meat long ago, dairy a year ago, chicken six months ago, fruit four months ago. “It costs 1,000,000 rials (about $0.90) every time we buy bread. There is not much distance left until absolute hunger,” the person said.
One self-described employee earning 220,000,000 rials (around $195) a month and renting on a city’s outskirts said survival required queuing for subsidized poultry. “We removed meat from our diet at Nowruz because we were coming up short,” the message said.
Several said long-considered staples – Iranian rice, fish, nuts, fresh fruit and legumes – had become aspirations. “We eat only bread, yogurt and rice from morning to night,” another message said.
Health concerns mounting
In mid-October, domestic outlets reported that roughly 35 percent of recorded deaths were linked to undernutrition. Health ministry estimates say at least 10,000 people die each year from shortages of omega-3 fatty acids, another 10,000 from low fruit and vegetable intake, and about 25,000 from insufficient whole grains.
Shortages extend beyond food. “People are cutting doctor visits and medicine before anything else,” another respondent wrote. “We live on luck alone.”
One family of four said six months had passed since they last bought meat. “Life has become hard. My 16-year-old son left school to work, yet we still cannot cover daily needs,” the message said.
Another wrote that the essentials most families consider the heart of a meal – red meat, chicken and fish – were now out of reach. “If this government continues, the rest will disappear too, whether we like it or not,” the person said.
Many described a shift to cheaper staples. “Everything has been removed from my basket: fruit, dairy, meat, legumes. The only things I can still manage, with difficulty, are Indian rice, eggs and potatoes,” one message said.
Middle-class erosion
Several respondents who once identified with the middle class said they were now buying fruit with difficulty. “We take four apples, some pears, persimmons, cucumbers and oranges – it reaches 20,000,000 rials (around $18). One kilo of meat is 15,000,000 rials (about $13),” a message said, calling the situation “frightening and broken.”
Travel – once a marker of modest stability – has vanished. “Red meat, chicken, fish, clothes and gold have become dreams. Travel is zero,” one person said.
Amid the accounts of vanished foods, one message pressed for solutions rather than surveys. “We need a way out, not a question whose answer we all already know,” the person said.
Independent labor and pensioner groups warned in a joint 21 October statement that worsening living conditions and unanswered demands were pushing more workers, teachers and retirees toward street-level protest. They wrote that daily demonstrations reflected a determination to “win rights and express grievances” despite the economic strain.
The broad concern running through the messages is not only what families can no longer buy, but how long they can endure a decline that has turned routine meals into calculations of survival.