Pezeshkian urges universities to help nation out of crises
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian on Saturday called on universities to take a front-seat role in solving the country’s “critical” national and regional challenges, including budget reform, water scarcity and energy use.
Speaking at a meeting on government-university cooperation in Tehran, Pezeshkian said research and scientific activity should directly serve the goal of problem-solving, president.ir reported.
“We’ve gone down the wrong path,” he said, urging professors and institutions to “point out the mistakes” and “show the right way.”
The president emphasized that universities should not just offer critique but step up with concrete proposals. “We need faculties to take responsibility,” he said, naming economics, energy, employment and water management as urgent areas.
Pezeshkian proposed that universities form a working group to launch the overhaul of the national budgeting system. “This is a complex process,” he said, adding that a one-size-fits-all budget model won’t work across ministries.
Pezeshkian also floated the idea of giving underperforming state-owned companies to universities, urging them to turn losses into profits and generate revenue in the process.
He pointed to practical examples where academic input could bring direct benefits—from chemical faculties finding ways to locally source raw pharmaceutical materials to geologists helping revive dormant mines.
Iran faces serious water shortages, even in coastal cities like Abadan and Khorramshahr, Pezeshkian warned.
He said universities should draw on global models. “Look at how Stanford or Oxford are run,” Pezeshkian noted, suggesting that Iran’s institutions could learn from their administrative structures and applied research approaches.
The president also pointed to the country’s weak planning system as a major source of economic and environmental failure. “A country like Turkey, with its dams and water, still has a drought plan. We don’t,” he said.
In line with a broader decentralization effort, Pezeshkian encouraged universities to offer practical solutions tailored to provincial challenges, ahead of a planned handover of authority to local governments.
Prior to the president’s remarks, Iran's Minister of Science, Research, and Technology Hossein Simaei Sarraf noted that university-government collaboration has grown significantly. In 2013, universities handled around 3,000 government projects; that figure has jumped to 11,000 in 2024.
“That’s a healthy rate,” the minister said, “though expectations are higher.”