Affirmative action ruined Iran's education system, too

By Majid Mohammadi February 12, 2019

In 1982, when Iranian universities and colleges opened their doors to students after the so-called Cultural Revolution, a new group of students was admitted based on affirmative action.  They were coming from very low-income families and from families who had a "martyr" during the 1979 Revolution. Almost all of them failed in STEM courses in the first semester.  In a class of 40, all of them got zero scores in Physics 101.

To cope with these students, faculty members lowered the level of the courses.  As the academic level plunged, more and more of these students occupied university and college seats.  Some years later, the family members of killed soldiers, the veterans of the Iran-Iraq War, and Basij members were added to the list of groups who could benefit from the affirmative action policy.  These groups became the counter-movement to any anti-authoritarian and anti-totalitarian movements in the universities and elsewhere.

Academia down the toilet.........When I came to the U.S. for my Ph.D., I witnessed another show of affirmative action and its consequences.  During my graduate school years, experienced faculty members were replaced by members of minorities who could not teach or write and were not able to do research.

Area studies (women studies, Latino studies...), which offer no basic knowledge to the students, replaced core studies in my department (sociology) and the generation of experts in analytical and theoretical sociology was replaced by identity-oriented faculty members who were mainly activists and not scholars.  In only a decade, the whole department's curricula and quality were bombed into rubbles...............To Read More.........