Being a graduate student for many years has made me slightly jaded. Tired of late night study sessions and the stress of being constantly evaluated, I look forward to the rigors of a 9-5 job, and collecting a secure salary.

Of course I am well aware of the adage that it is not the final destination I need to appreciate, but the journey along the way.

However, this offers me little solace as I naturally take for granted that I live in a society in which people can gain access to post secondary education if they posses the ability, interest and material resources.

Certainly university is expensive and this places restrictions on a number of otherwise qualified candidates. Yet, despite the fact that I have experienced the burden of a student loan, I never really stopped to think of the privileges that are associated with education.

I was recently awoken from my ignorant slumber when a friend informed me of a number of incidents in Iran, where many students have been denied education due to their religious beliefs. Religion is certainly never something I imagined governments would use against their own citizens.

For well over a quarter of a century, Iranian Baha'is have been denied the opportunity to participate in post secondary education. To this day, the Iranian government covertly manages to discriminate against Baha'is, despite the fact that the United Nations, academic departments and human rights organizations around the world continue to place pressure on the State to desist from asking applicants about their religious affiliation.

Roughly 800 of 1000 Baha'is who wrote entrance exams in 2007 have been given notice that their files were "incomplete."

The Iranian government continues to systematically label many qualified Baha'i applications as "incomplete" and thus they are unable to register and attend university.

This "incomplete" designation is but one more tactic in a long list of human rights violations in which the Iranian government denies higher educational access to its largest religious minority; a minority whose only crime is their fundamental belief in the oneness of humanity, the equality of men and women and the elimination of all forms of prejudice.

From a moral perspective, denying higher education based on religious discrimination is fundamentally wrong. Furthermore, from a pedagogical approach, it is also deeply flawed.

Silencing the voice of the Baha'i youth in Iran not only stifles the growth of a whole people, but it also denies those who are not Baha'i invaluable exposure to different cultures and belief systems.

Classroom learning is stagnant unless it is allowed to thrive in an environment that appreciates diversity. Does the spark of truth not emerge from the peaceful clash of differing opinions?

Being aware of this situation, I have come to see education not as a privilege, but as a universal human right. To be denied this right, makes us all "incomplete."