Commodification in Policy Making of Public Education in Iran; Critical Appraisal of Foundations and Outcomes

Commodification in education is amongst those policies which have been highly promoted globally based on various grounds and by different means and justifications in recent years and Iran is not an exception. This research, by using content analysis method, studies the documents, regulations and measurements taken by the Iranian government in this regard to represent the current condition of the commodification of public Education in contemporary Iran along with a critical analysis of this policy in regard to its theoretical foundations and also its moral, educational, social and economic consequences. Based on the findings of the research, commodification of public education in Iran is expanding through phenomena and processes such as (apparent and hidden) privatization, buying and selling educational services and plans of monetization of schools. This is despite the fact that, commodification is based on neoliberalism and therefore, contradictive to the Islamic foundations and values about the nature of knowledge, the ideal education and the responsibility of government in public education as a public right. Also, on the other hand and based on global and local experiences, implementing this policy will prepare the ground for undesired outcomes such as the decline of moral and social values, reduction in the quality of state-run education, inequality and injustice and decrease of the economic, scientific and technological efficiency and growth.