Examining the Decline in University Enrollment Demand within Iran’s Higher Education Governance Ecosystem: The Case of Technical and Engineering Fields

The market, together with universities and the government, forms the higher education governance ecosystem in human resource planning. This study employs a systemic approach to explain how the relational patterns among these actors have generated the decline in demand for technical and engineering programs in Iran. Drawing on qualitative data from seventeen experts in higher education governance, the study applies the systematic grounded theory approach of Strauss and Corbin. The emerging model reveals that relations between universities and the market in the supply and training of technical and engineering human resources are directed and controlled by state ideology and its bureaucratic structures, largely detached from theoretical, territorial, and rational considerations. This approach constitutes the central source of disruption in the natural quantitative and qualitative order between these two institutions. Political and economic instability, including international sanctions and shifts in political discourse, have further exacerbated this disruption. In response, each actor has adopted distinct strategies: the government persists with the current approach through renewed methods; higher education institutions deny the existence of a crisis; and the market remains largely indifferent. Collectively, this situation has led to the devaluation of university education, the weakening of the labor market, and an identity crisis in technical and engineering fields, ultimately resulting in the observed decline in demand. Therefore, addressing this issue requires fundamental reforms in government–university–market relations, shifting from a control-oriented and ideologically driven model to a participatory and proactive governance framework in human resource planning.