Effective planning is essential for progress, especially in science, knowledge, and technology. Beyond setting quantitative and qualitative goals, the mechanisms for achieving and evaluating these objectives are equally crucial. This article analyzes the successes and shortcomings of the Sixth Five-Year Development Plan in the higher education sector. The results show that several key performance indicators have surpassed 90% of their targets, demonstrating relative success. These include the number of patents registered with international authorities, the proportion of international students relative to domestic students, the number of universities ranked among the top 100 in Asia, the annual number of Scopus-indexed articles per full-time faculty member, the percentage of articles co-authored with foreign researchers and the number of Iran publications indexed in international scientific databases. However, certain areas continue to underperforming, with achievement rates falling below 50%, such as the share of government research, and technology funding in the gross domestic product, which stands at 28.7%; the proportion of postgraduate students within the total student population, currently at 48.1%, and the percentage of graduate students pursing basic sciences, which is just 40%. To enhance the success of the Seventh Five-Year Development Plan, it is recommended that increased investments be made in research and development, the establishment of well-equipped laboratories, and the allocation of a higher share of research to the gross national product.