The New Academic Proletariat in Iran

Abstract

In the past few decades two important events have occurred simultaneously in Iran: on the one hand, the number of universities and university students has increased dramatically and, on the other hand, the unemployment rate among university graduates has outrun the rate of the other unemployed groups in the country. In the present article, while explaining this phenomenon in the context of post-revolutionary Iran, we examine the formation of a new academic workforce as a result of the unrestrained growth in the number of universities, the so-called scientific development and development of commercial institutes that have reduced science to a commodity. In our view, owing to their status in society, this group of people can be called the research proletariat. The data for the present study has been collected through higher education statistics in Iran, and in-depth interviews with PhD and Master’s students as well as graduates in Iran.