Students choice of selecting a university abroad depends heavily on the employability opportunities. Every year “The Times Higher Education” releases ranking list for universities around the world. The ranking is based on 13 performance indicators which measure the institution’s performance across teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.
The list is prepared after compiling answers of several recruiters, chief executives and business managers from top companies in 20 countries.
Let us have a look at the list “Top 10 Universities in Iran for Higher Education for the year 2020”
Babol Noshirvani University of Technology
Known for its spectacular scenery, Babol Noshirvani University of Technology is a co-educational public research university in Babol, 20km from the Mazandaran Sea (Caspian Sea). It is the only technological university in northern Iran.
Founded in 1970, it was originally known as the Technical Teachers Training Institute of Babol, and was intended to train students into technical instructors in the various fields of engineering.
It was joined to the University of Mazandaran in 1979, and renamed a College of Engineering, before regaining some independence and being renamed as Noshirvani Institute of Technology (Babol Noshiravani Technical and Educational Complex), before gaining status as its own university with its current name in 2008.
The major faculties of the university include Basic Sciences, Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering. The 11-hectare campus is spread over three buildings, housing four engineering departments and several laboratories, as well as a 750-seat amphitheatre.
Bound by the Caspian Sea in the north, the province of Mazandaran is also bordered by the rugged and snowcapped Alborz mountains in the south, giving it a temperate climate, with lush plains, wide prairies and dense forests. The Middle East’s highest peak, the Damavand volcano, is located in the Alborz sierra, as well as several expansive national parks.
The city of Babol, capital of Babol County, to the north-east of Tehran, is built on the remains of the ancient city of Mamatir, and is the region’s chief centre. Known as the “city of orange blossoms” for its orange farms, it is mountainous in the north and contains many monuments, such as the ruins of the 17th century Shah Abbas I’s palace
Describing itself as the “symbol of higher education” in Iran’s south-western Kokiluyeh and Boyerahmad province, Yasouj University was launched as Yasouj Technical Institute in 1983 and became a higher education complex 10 years later with the establishment of an agricultural institute.
Affiliated to Shiraz University throughout this period, it became an independent state university in 1996 and took its current name three years after that. Based in the provincial capital, Yasuj, the main campus has four faculties – science, agriculture, engineering and humanities.
Its development can be seen through the Department of Agronomy, established in 1988, which offered animal welfare and plant production from 1993, its first graduate degrees in 2005, plant production from 2006, forestry and watershed management from 2011 and doctorates from 2013. It has nine research laboratories covering subjects like insecticide, soil science and nematology and access to the 706-hectare Research Education Forest.
There are also two satellite campuses. The Gachsaran Oil and Gas University has operated since 2012 providing courses in polymer engineering, applied chemistry and welding mechanics. The Graduate School of Industry and Mines, established in Chahar in 2012, offers programmes in rural development, technical engineering, gas supply and statistics.
Research Centres cover natural resources, local and linguistic studies and floral and herbal medicine, with a medical herb garden currently under construction.
The Science and Technology Park hosted Iran’s first national technology and aerospace competition in 2018 while research discoveries in 2016 included a viper which uses a tail shaped like a spider to lure its prey.
Amirkabir University of Technology
Opened in 1958, Amirkabir University of Technology has grown to be one of the main spots to study engineering in Iran. As a public institution, it is mostly funded by the state.
Amirkabir University of Technology is spread across four campuses and boasts some 14,000 square metres of green space. The main campus is located in the old and busy centre of Teheran, and the other three are in the small towns of Mahshahr, Garmsar and the port town Bandar Abbas. The university owns about 250 research and educational labs, as well as a stadium and hosts a range of sports students can join.
Some of the areas Amirkabir specialises in are robotics, advanced textile materials and technology research, energy research, transportation, renewable energy, optics, nanotechnology and environment research. Regular competitions and conferences are part of academic life at the university. Alongside engineering and mathematical subjects, an MBA is also available.
Although the focus of the university is on sciences, Amirkabir’s notable alumni have gone to have varied careers. Among its famous engineers and scientists are nuclear engineer Majid Shahriari, chemical engineer Naeimeh Eshraghi and nuclear scientist and politician Ali Abbaspoor Tehrani Fard.
But Amirkabir has also formed politicians and cultural figures such as members of the Iranian parliament and reformist politicians Soheila Jelodarzadeh and Seyedeh Fatemeh Hosseini, film director Davod Mir-Bagheri and writer Jalal Al-e-Ahmad.
The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action enabled technological and scientific cooperation between Iranian and United Nations researchers. This has allowed Amirkabir University of Technology to create links with universities around the world in the form of student and professor exchanges, dual degrees and joint workshops.
AUT also offers online courses.
The University of Kashan in the city of Kashan, Iran, 230 km south of Tehran, was opened in 1974 as the first higher education institution in Kashan.
Starting only with 200 students taking undergraduate courses in physics and mathematics, the university now offers study in over 180 courses, in 11 faculties, including engineering, chemistry, arts and humanities.
Housed on 530 hectares of campus, the university has about 8,000 students across over 180 courses, 60 per cent of whom are female. There are about 180 full-time academic staff members. About 40 per cent of students are in postgraduate studies.
The University of Kashan is the only university in Iran in which students are able to study for an MSc or PhD in nanotechnology, which takes place at a dedicated research centre.
The Carpet Research Centre focuses on the art of carpet weaving: carpet-dying, designing, raw materials, history, sociology, carpet-mending, economics and business.
Other research institutes specialise in areas such as energy, astronomy, water and sustainable development and architecture and urban development.
Facilities include an observatory, with a planetarium. There is also an entrepreneurship centre, healthcare centre and student counsel centre, dormitory complexes, a restaurant complex, green spaces, a mosque, study halls, sports facilities including a shooting range, and a health-care centre. The university also has several affiliated centres in Ghamsar, Niasar and Tehran.
The Centre for Kashan Studies has been created to study the culture, history and ecology of the area, publishing Kashan Shenakt Periodical.
Mashhad University of Medical Sciences
The University of Mashhad was opened in 1949 to fill the demand for doctors in the north east of Iran. In 1994, the medical faculties were separated out from the rest of the university’s schools and became Mashhad University of Medical Sciences (MUMS).
The university offers teaching in seven areas: medicine; dentistry; pharmacy; nursing and midwifery; hygiene; paramedical sciences; and traditional Persian medicine. In total, 8,500 students are enrolled at MUMS, with just under 300 of them from outside of Iran.
As well as operating over 30 hospitals and 20 health and treatment networks in the region, MUMS runs 51 research centres, two growth centres and two central research institutes. The university worked with the World Health Organization (WHO) as part of its Global Health Workforce Alliance. In September 2017, it hosted the International Congress of Nutrition, featuring contributions from WHO and the UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
Mashhad is a centre for tourism in Iran. The biggest attraction for visitors is the shrine to Imam Reza, one of the descendants of the Prophet Muhammed. It is one of the most significant sites in Shia Islam. The complex stretches to nearly 600,000 square metres, making it one of, if not the, largest mosques in the world by size. Millions of pilgrims visit Mashhad each year to see the shrine. In 2017, the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation named Mashhad as one of its cultural capitals of the Muslim world.
Sharif University of Technology
Sharif University of Technology, founded in 1966, is one of the largest engineering schools in Iran. When it was established, the university had just 54 members of faculty, and 412 students. It now has more than 10,000 students.
Located in Tehran, the capital of Iran, SUT was previously known as the Aryamehr University of Industry but was renamed after former student Majid Sharif Vaghefi, who was killed in 1975.
The university, which has a reputation in Iran as being one of the country’s most prestigious higher education institutions, offers a range of graduate and postgraduate degrees in its 15 departments, and does not only offer engineering courses.
Among other non-engineering schools are its Department of Philosophy of Science, its School of Management and Economics, and its Department of Languages and Linguistics.
Each department has its own laboratories, library, and workshops, and students can choose to take humanities and social sciences courses to complement their technical studies.
Admission for undergraduates wishing to study at Sharif University of Technology is tough. Only those obtaining the top 5 per cent of scores in Iran’s national entrance examination, carried out by the country’s Ministry of Culture and Higher Education, can enroll.
SUT’s current chancellor is Mahmoud Fotouhi Firouzabad, a graduate of Sharif University of Technology who also studied at the University of Tehran and the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.
Among SUT’s famous alumni are Ali Larijani, speaker of the Iranian parliament; pianist, Peyman Yazdanian; international football’s all-time leading goalscorer Ali Daei; and Elshan Moradi, chess grandmaster.
Tehran University of Medical Sciences
Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS), founded in 1851 as Dar-ol-Fonoon , is the oldest medical centre in Iran. With a history of more than 160 years, it stands as one of the most prestigious universities of medical sciences in the region. It brings together a community of faculty, students and staff who provide education, conduct research and take the lead in public service initiatives in Iran. It focuses on creating new therapies for a broad array of medical issues related to the community’s health and well-being. TUMS graduates and professional schools express the university’s commitment to research, rigorous standards and innovative application of knowledge. TUMS is accredited by Accreditation Services for International Colleges (ASIC) as a “premier university”. TUMS consists of 12 Schools, more than 80 research centres, 15 scientific pivots, nine educational and health research stations in nine provinces, five technology incubator centres, 16 hospitals with 7,000 active beds and 44 libraries. It offers specialised undergraduate and postgraduate degrees.
Imam Khomeini International University
Imam Khomeini International University was founded in 1991 and like many of Iran’s institutions, such as Tehran’s main airport, the national space centre and countless hospitals it was named after the creator of the modern Islamic state.
It is based in Qazvim, a city 85 miles to the north west of Tehran famed for its traditions of calligraphy, and was part of the membership of the Silk Road Universities Network.
Bringing together “fundamental education and innovative research towards the challenges of modern times”, it aspires to be “a world-class university in the Middle East committed to the complete and sustainable development of research and teaching”.
There are approximately 8,400 students at the university, with the largest numbers in technology and engineering (2,100), social sciences (1,692) and basic science (1,503). The other faculties are Islamic science and research, literature and humanities, agriculture and natural resources and architecture and urbanism.
There is a strong interdisciplinary focus, with the development of new majors such as power plant building and complexes. The faculty of architecture and urbanism offered some of the university’ earliest MSc courses and hosts regular national conferences on its subject areas.
The university also lives up to the “international” element in its title. It has concluded 20 Memoranda of Understanding since 2014, the earliest with the universities of Xian in China and Indus in Pakistan.
The Persian Language centre offers “general” and “complementary” courses in the language for between 200 and 250 overseas students every year.
Six of the first 13 chancellors studied in the United States, and two in the UK.
Iran University of Medical Sciences
Founded in 1974 as the Imperial Medical Centre, the Iran University of Medical Sciences has grown and changed considerably from origins in which it was linked to a single hospital.
Located close to the 435m Milad Tower in Tehran, it can now to point to connections with medical institutions in the Iranian capital which are reckoned to be responsible for the care of around four million people. These include 17 teaching and 15 non-teaching hospitals.
Merged with the Tehran University of Medical Science in 2010, it regained its independence three years later and continues to be regarded as one of Iran’s most prestigious centres for medical education and research. Divided into 10 schools, specialising in disciplines such as rehabilitation sciences, traditional medicine and advanced medical techniques, and with a total of 29 research centres, it usually expects to draw its student body from the top one per cent of candidates in national entrance examinations.
It has published its own monthly Persian-language medical journal since 1994, adding the four-yearly English-medium Annals of Iranian Medicine in 2004. A survey in 2015 found it to be the leading Iranian medical research school on the basis of productivity and citation impact.
It has been a pioneer of nursing and midwifery in Iran, setting up the first Nursing Care Research Centre in the country, while in 2014 it was recognised as a World Health Organization Collaboration Centre for education and research in nursing and midwifery, joining the WHO’s global network of development centres in those disciplines.
Iran University of Science and Technology
The Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) was founded in 1929 in the Iranian capital Tehran in order to train the country’s engineers and today is considered one of the foremost technical schools in the country.
Originally named the Governmental Technical Institute, it was later called the Advanced Art College before being upgraded to the Iran Faculty of Science and Technology in 1972. In 1978 the Ministry of Sciences granted the faculty full university status and IUST was born.
The university is home to 13 faculties offering undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in a range of engineering-based subjects as well as maths and physics. In 1995 IUST awarded Iran’s first PhDs in Materials, Metallurgical and Traffic Engineering.
There are also 12 research centres, nine centres of excellence and 19 specialised libraries as well as four satellite campuses in other parts of the country.
The campus is situated in the Narmark area in the northeast of Tehran on 42 acres that include academic and administrative buildings, the main library, halls of residence, mosque and indoor and outdoor sports facilities. The university also boasts a 20,000 seater sports stadium.
Alumni include many current and former government ministers but most notably Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s sixth president both studied and taught at the university. Ahmadinejad enrolled in the undergraduate degree in civil engineering at IUST in 1976 before going on to study a masters and then a PhD in traffic and transportation engineering and planning, joining the faculty as a lecturer in 1989.
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