DUSHANBE, November 27, 2012, Asia-Plus  -- The first group of Tajik students, numbering forty-one persons, left for Iran for studying Tuesday morning.

“Thirty-eight other Tajik students who have received official entry confirmations will fly to Iran in the near future,” Abdusattor Odinayev, an official at the Ministry of Education (MoE), told Asia-Plus in an interview.

According to him, twenty students will fly to Tehran on the following Tuesday and the remaining eighteen students will fly to Iran in mid-December.

In Iran, the academic year starts in December and Iran has allotted a quota of 250 students to Tajikistan this year.

However, only 100 students have lodged applications for studying in Iran; of them, 19 persons have given up their plans to study in Iran and applications of several other candidates have been refused.

According to the statistical data from a MoE, some 200 Tajik students are currently studying in Iranian universities.  In 2011, Iran reportedly increased the student quota for Tajikistan five times -- from 50 to 250 students.