Qasem Ahmadi, a member of the Education Commission of the regime’s parliament, blamed the exodus on ‘neglect’ of the nation’s most gifted people by the ruling elite.
He told the parliament’s website on July 16: “Many of those ranking first to tenth in college entry exams in the past 15 years have fled the country.
“It is very unfortunate for an education system to lose a student or university student that it has invested in for two decades. The issue of the brain drain and migration of the elite has long been regarded a serious damage to the education system, but today it is affected the country’s scientific community.”
According to the International Monetary Fund, Iran lost 15 per cent of its most highly educated people in the early 1990s, when more than 150,000 Iranians left the country every year and 25 per cent of all Iranians with post-secondary education lived abroad in ‘developed’ countries.
A report by the International Monetary Fund in 2009 also found that Iran topped the list of countries losing their academic elite, with an annual loss of 150,000 to 180,000 specialists – equivalent to a capital loss of $50 billion.
The political crackdown following the 2009 election protests is also said to have fuelled the exodus of Iran’s academic elite.