Higher education expansion policy in Iran and its impact on educational justice

After World War II, the need for skilled labors in the economic market and democratic demands provided the setting for higher education expansion in all over the world and this has become a universal phenomenon.  In addition, higher education in Iran that initiated with the justice-seeking goals has experienced significant expansion in the last two decades. Nowadays expansion of higher education has been the main issue among the policy makers in Iran. By designing a qualitative research in three stages, the current research tried to answer the following main question: does higher education expansion in Iran play a significant role in improving educational justice and access to higher education? In the first stage of the research, which was conducted through10 unstructured interviews with higher education policy makers, the reasons for the quantitative expansion of higher education were examined from their point of view. After that, 6 after revolution official developmental documents were analysed. Finally, educational justice in the years of massivism were evaluated through statistical analysis in two areas of gender and income decks as the most important variables in the analysis of access to higher education. According to the participants’ points of view and official documents analysis, the results showed that higher education expansion initiated by the valuable goals such as improving educational justice and access to higher education. However, malfunction about some main concepts such as access and educational justice have show negative consequences on higher education statistics. The results also showed that higher education expansion has an impact on declining higher education institutions’ quality and it has failed to fulfil its most important goal in the field of educational justice and access.