If you’re a young Iranian, chances are, that more than anything else, more than protests or Ahmadinejad or forced veiling, you have one thing on your mind:konkoor. The yearly university entrance exams.

One of the things that the late Sohrab Arabi’s mother talks about in the speeches she gives about him after his death, is that he was preparing for the konkoor. In fact, she spoke about how on the day he died, he had gone to buy a book of multiple choice questions for the konkoor.

For every high school student, the konkoor is one of the most important, most crucial, life-defining aspect of their lives.

In the year I graduated high school, over 1.7 million students took the exam.

For years and years now, ever since I can remember, there has been talk of omitting the konkoor. The biggest problem is that no coherent solutions/substitutions have ever been offered. Ahmadinejad spoke of it repeatedly in his first administration. Now, his second is aggressively continuing the discussion.

Kamran Daneshjou, the current minister of Higher Educaiton and the man half responsible for orchestrating the June 2009 Selection at the interior ministry, declared this week that “the political freedoms enjoyed in Iran are unprecedented in the rest of the world” (he sure got that one right!) and that “not a single student was arrested based on their political activities. Political activity must be conducted under the law, and if anyone has been arrested it has been for breaking the law. Political activism means critique, we can not tolerate disrespect and the smearing of our great leaders.”

He also reported that the konkoor would be omitted “gradually” from this year, and totally gone by 2012. But, as is typical of the ahmadinejad clan, there wasNO word on how this is to be done.

At the same time, Mohammad Hossein Sarveddin, a top deputy at the ministry, the head of the Testing Organization [the body responsible for conducting the entrance exam] also said this week that the Konkoor would be eliminated by 2012. He reiterated Kamran Daneshjou about the konkoor and added: “his views on Azad University and Government universities add up together, like the wings of two birds and we must take his advice about Islamicizing the Azad university very seriously.” [as I wrote earlier, there is a lot of effort on the part of the Ahmadinejad administration to take Azad University, a multi-million dollar enterprise, from Jasbi, its current head and an ally of Rafsanjani. They have thus far failed.]

He continued: “Nowhere in the world do they allow those who oppose their political systems to enter university. Not to even mention actually teach at university and give anti-establishment talks.” He added that there are plans to further “look into the competence of university faculty, because after all, competence means nothing without dedication to the system.”

I’ve always wondered about the motivations of the Ahmadinejad government for continuously speaking about omitting the konkoor.

Granted that this has been a topic of major discussion for decades now, but, no one has provided a coherent solution yet, and the current administration seems no different. Out of the dozens of interviews I’ve read in which this topic has been mentioned, not a single case is there were these deputies or ministers have actually given even a vague plan or blueprint for what they plan to do exactly.

This makes me think that there are other motivations behind this, which isn’t too wild to assume, given their record.

This constant talk can be an election gimmick (2012 is just a year from the election with millions of new voters who have since turned 16). Another  likely scenario is that they want total and absolute control over the admission process. If they omit the entrance exam all together, they will have much, MUCH better control over who can get into university – especially top universities which are completely devoid of any government support both in faculty and students. Currently, there is the gozinesh [the screening process after the exam results are in] so they do have some control. But if there is no test at all, and the applications are only reviewed by their own teams, they will have ever better oversight over who they want to admit.

Another scenario can be related to their plans to overtake Azad University – which has thus far failed. If government claims full responsibility of this admission process, they can claim that they need control of Azad University as well.

These are a few of the reasons that I can come up with behind this aggressive – yet empty – campaign.

Here are more photos of the parents and families praying outside the university gates during last year’s exam. The photos are utterly heartbreaking to me, because I’ve seen the turmoil families and children experience during the year of their konkoor. But even with that in mind, I don’t trust this current administration with changing things around, and think kids will be better off as is, than in any other scenario Ahmadinejad & Co. can cook up for them.

The books they are holding in the photos are all prayer books or Korans. Even the little girls you see in the first photo are carrying a prayer and beads.