Gender analysis of Afghan students’ challenges in the Iranian higher education

The Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the most important host countries for Afghan immigrants in the last four decades, and the Afghan student community is by far the largest group of non-Iranian students in Iranian higher education. Leading research seeks to answer these two questions: What are the most important obstacles and challenges for Afghan students in entering the Iranian higher education stage and how is the life experience of Afghan female students at this stage shaped in their cultural adaptation process? . The data collection method is a combination of documentary and library sources, semi-structured interviews with 71 Afghan students and interviews with relevant institutions and has been studied based on the model of cultural motivation and content analysis technique. The results showed that Iranian higher education has played an important role in their vertical mobility by strengthening the cultural and social capital of Afghan girls, but the exposure of Afghan students to the set of obstacles that exist before entering university affects the culturalization process of this group. The double difficulty of the entrance exam with the subject of forbidden cities and fields, the multiplicity of decision-making institutions in the field of international students, the bureaucratic challenges of transferring from the institution of education to the institution of higher education, the lack of information and the lack of uniformity in policy In the field of immigrants, the impact of political relations between the two countries and regional equations on the university institution, tuition challenges, ambiguity in scholarships and the impact of immigration status change law on the decline of girls in higher education are some of the most important challenges for Afghan students in Is Iran. Incomplete and unbalanced acculturation will increase prejudice and intensify cultural bias, which will overshadow the national interests of the country. This issue has several consequences and can negatively affect the main goal of internationalization of Iranian higher education, which is emphasized in all upstream documents, based on the training of cultural ambassadors.