Expenditure on tertiary education (% of government expenditure on education)_

Event_Log

1. 011974Great Civilization spending surge -- Fifth Plan revisedAssociation

   Following the 1973-74 oil price quadrupling, government oil revenue rises from $5bn to $19bn in a year; the Shah revises the Fifth Development Plan, nearly doubling total planned investment from $36.5bn to $70bn and raising overall government spending from $44bn to $123bn, fueling severe absorptive-capacity bottlenecks and inflation.

   Why this link: Tertiary education's share of government education spending rose from 19.1% (1974) to a series-record 42.3% (1977), consistent with well-documented oil-boom-era higher-education expansion (new campus capacity and rapidly growing enrollment across the university system) financed by the Fifth Plan's upward revision after the 1973-74 price shock.

   Caveat: This series has real data gaps (no 1976 observation), so the 1977 figure is the first available post-1975 data point, not necessarily the exact single-year peak.

   Lag: immediate, 1974-1977Source: Intereconomics (Naini) -- The Fifth Development Plan
2. 021979Islamic RevolutionAssociation

   Mohammad Reza Shah's government falls; the Islamic Republic is proclaimed under Ayatollah Khomeini on 1 April 1979.

   Why this link: The tertiary share collapsed from the 42.3% (1977) peak to 9.0% (1981) and 7.3% (1983) -- a roughly 83% relative decline -- coinciding with the 1980-83 Cultural Revolution (Enqelab-e Farhangi), during which the new government closed all universities for Islamization of curricula and purged faculty and students, sharply cutting actual tertiary-level activity and spending even as overall education spending continued.

   Caveat: The Cultural Revolution university closures are not themselves a dated row in this project's timeline/iran.csv (a genuine gap) -- the February 1979 revolution event is used here as the closest available dated anchor for the broader political transition that produced the closures a year later, not as a claim that the revolution itself instantaneously caused this specific fiscal reallocation.

   Lag: immediate, 1977-1981Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica