As thousands of students travelled to London on Wednesday to protest against higher tuition fees, some feared the use of plastic bullets and excessive police force. None gave a second thought to whether their participation in the protest would jeopardize the funding they are already entitled to at university. The idea that the political views of a student could affect their eligibility for grants seems ridiculous, yet it is the reality in Iran.

Less than a month ago, Kamran Daneshjou, the Iranian minister responsible for higher education, was reported as saying that Iran’s government cannot support “those who oppose the regime... and wherever we are informed that the bursary recipients are supporters of sedition, we will definitely cut off their grants.” The protests referred to are part of the Green Revolution, a widespread reaction to allegations of vote fraud in the 2009 elections, when at least 36 people died during the first three months.

This outrageously open admission of political discrimination in Iranian education may seem surprising, but this latest announcement by Daneshjou merely scratches the surface of a deep seated, institutionalized discrimination. Entrance for Iranian universities is based on an exam, but applications need to be approved by the Ministry of Intelligence, who have the power to block students’ applications. According to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, since the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005, students’ academic records have been flagged to indicate undesirable political or religious beliefs. As a result,they have been rejected from degree programmes or had their exam results withheld. They found that at least 217 students have been barred from higher education.

This direct involvement of government agencies in systematic discrimination is striking. In the UK and around the world, students are some of society’s most politically active members. It is hard to imagine any of us standing for our government withholding our exam results or refusing us entry to university in spite of them, so why is it okay for us to accept this behaviour in Iran?

In 1975, Iran signed the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) which sets out that “higher education shall be made equally accessible to all,” so in these actions Iran is disobeying its own laws. However, the regime claims that decisions about students are based upon resolutions of the Supreme Council for the Cultural Revolution, which is “above the law”.

So what can be done if the Iranian government disregard foreign chastisement and international law? Recently, the UK Ministry of Defence announced that it was preparing to be ready for attack on Iran as part of a “strategy of pressure” responding to the International Atomic Energy Agency November report on Iran’s nuclear programmes. This would suggest that education rights are far from the current British agenda in Iran, making a call for UK diplomatic pressure on Iran seem futile. However, in an encouraging move this September, Catherine Aston, the EU foreign policy chief, condemned the Iranian government for its discrimination in higher education. She particularly mentioned the persecution of the Baha’i religious minority, who are systematically denied access to universities and whose own underground institute for higher education was shut down this summer, with many Baha’i professors being arrested.

The students of Iran deserve our support and we must take action. The ‘Can You Solve This’ campaign is a coalition of organizations inside and outside of Iran aiming to use social networking media to help end the Iranian practise of discriminating against activists, feminists, human rights defenders and religious minorities in education. Since the start of the campaign, thousands of letters have been sent to European leaders calling for pressure on Iran. In Germany, street artists across the country, where the campaign has been particularly strong, have been graffiting the website's QR code on paving stones and bus stops.

While it appears overly optimistic to say we can ‘solve this’ problem, as the campaign title suggests, it is nonetheless important to support campaigns such as this one. This is because, while individuals can rarely ‘solve’ international issues, the pressure of enough people can keep this issue on the agenda, and prevent it from being forgotten by both international leaders and fellow students like us. In a world where ‘terror’ and ‘security’ are the dominant discourse, it is easy for humanitarian issues, such as the importance of equal access to education, to get overlooked, and this cannot be accepted. Education is key to the growth and development of Iran, and also to creating mutual understanding and peace between our two countries. If enough people show their solidarity with the students of Iran, change is at least possible worth a try.