Showing 2 results for Welfare Fund
Majid Safaei Lari, Ali Akbar Mohammadi, Hamid Raeisi, Zakiyeh Raeisi,
Volume 24, Issue 1 (5-2025)
Abstract
Background and purpose: The Student Welfare Fund of Iran's Ministry of Health is a public institution tasked with providing financial aid to medical students. Amid growing demand for these services and constrained government resources, a comprehensive analysis of the full cost of loan disbursement is crucial for ensuring operational efficiency and financial sustainability.
Methods: This applied, descriptive study conducted a retrospective cost analysis from the perspective of the Student Welfare Fund. The study population comprised all student loan records processed during the 2024 fiscal year. A hybrid top-down and bottom-up costing methodology was employed to determine the full cost of the loan disbursement process. Data were extracted from the Fund's internal financial records, annual reports, and publicly available price lists for equipment and consumables, and subsequently analyzed using Microsoft Excel.
Results: The full cost per loan processed was lowest for single-student academic and essential-needs loans, at IRR 33,538,137, and highest for housing deposit loans, at IRR 56,743,475. The total cost for all student loans disbursed during the 2024 fiscal year amounted to IRR 124,222,283,295.
Conclusion: Processing times were shortest for academic loans and longest for housing deposit loans. Human resources constituted the largest cost component in the disbursement process. Despite the significant personnel costs, a comparison between the full costs and the service fees collected suggests that the Fund's operational processes and staff performance are acceptably efficient.
Soheila Eshaghi Koupaei, Mehrdad Bagherpour Kalo, Hamid Raeisi, Ahmad Khodaverdi Nadrabadi, Malikeh Bahadori,
Volume 24, Issue 3 (12-2025)
Abstract
Background and purpose: To enhance students' academic motivation, effective interventions can be implemented. One such approach is the provision of financial support through targeted subsidy programs, prioritizing students from lower socioeconomic deciles in the allocation of financial assistance. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to examine the distribution of financial aid to underprivileged students of universities and faculties of medical sciences across the country based on income deciles.
Methods: Data included information on the financial facilities provided to students, as well as the economic data related to household socioeconomic deciles. In this study, five main types of financial facilities were examined: educational loans, emergency loans, housing deposit loans, marriage loans, and tuition loans. The final data were stored in structured databases, and data analysis—consisting of frequency and the corresponding proportions for each decile and university—was performed using Microsoft Excel.
Results: The findings of this study indicated that a roughly similar share of financial facilities was allocated to students in income deciles 1 to 7 (100,177 students) and those in deciles 8 to 10 (97,386 students). In other words, in terms of monetary value, 1,365 billion Rials in educational loans were allocated to the first seven income deciles, while 838 billion Rials were allocated to the three higher-income deciles.
Conclusion: The findings of this study revealed that within the loan and financial aid distribution system of the Student Welfare Fund, students from higher income deciles receive the largest share of available resources, while students from lower-income deciles do not receive adequate benefits.
