Thanks for bringing this to my attention, Anaig! It reminds me of what we are doing in the United States, in Arizona, banning Mexican-American history from K-12 schools and actually punishing schools (stripping them of funds) that are continuing to teach this integral part of American history. And these schools are predominately Latino. Barring any topic and any group of people from education will only hurt everyone, including those in power making these ridiculous decisions. The wonderful thing about women is that they will only get stronger, smarter, more educated and more vocal with these restrictions and the world will be supporting them, in solidarity.

Aniag, I read the article, it also made me curious that how much this is true because Iranians in general pay so much attention to education and I don't think anyone can simply regulate such a law !!!

It was not mentioned in the article that if this is going to be applied on every single universities or only a few universities. there are several types of universities in Iran which each of them follow a particular system. I don't think this is ever going to be applied on Public Universities but its likely that Free-Islamic universities follow it or maybe a few universities in some places in some majors !!!!

Another issue is that, some majors are already stated each year that how many Females and Males are they going to take for the next academic year. the majors like Nuclear Physics, Computer Science and some other majors of engineering have more male applicants than females so that number of sits which have been booked for females might stay empty for the next year that's why sometimes they change priorities and might give our more sits in other majors to women.

Anyways, this article is not explaining everything so it cannot be trusted it's kind of "incomplete". As I said education is the first concern of people in Iran and they can't make this big decision suddenly as most of the students in Iran are girls and they even have "Female-sex Universities".

I'm also curious to hear more from another Iranian friend who is living in Iran and has heard more accurate news about it. I hope it's helped

Hi Aliko - I thought the same thing when I read it. I was kind of surprised because my impression of Iran was that despite the many issues we hear being reported on the country, education was an area of strength. Were you able to find out anything more about it? Thanks!

An article caught my attention and reminded me of the conversation Anaig started. Though it is in Pakistan, not Iran, it speaks to the immediate international attention needed to support women's education. It also makes me realize what a strange privilege it is to have education-albeit ridiculously expensive-in the US. http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/25/world/asia/pakistan-college-malala/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

The regime of IRI is scared, they are loosing support even among their hard core conservative (read fanatic) followers, corruption is at a level that is hard to describe, the economy is at the edge of collapse, the US/EU sanctions are strangling the ordinary people and the regime does not have much to show for. Specially before the incoming election in June 2013.

These are desperate acts to draw the attention from the main issues in the country to issues that are actually not really important, but placed there to keep people's mind busy.