best universities in the world with only one Iran university named, US News & World Report published its annual listing of the 400 best universities in the world—and not a single Iranian school made the list.
The Times of London named the Sharif University of Technology in its band of the 301st to 350th best schools in the world.
US News & World Report named no Iranian university to its best 400. US News also produced a list of the 100 best universities in Asia; no Iranian university made that list either.
Both lists are partly subjective. For example, US News used six indicators to produce its list. Four were very objective—the faculty-student ratio, the number of times researchers have cited work done at a university, the proportion of international students and the proportion of international faculty members. But two were highly subjective: academic reputation and employer reputation.
Neither publication said the politicization of course work was a factor in the rating. That would not be a factor in any large number of countries, but it is a key concern in Iran right now. That element might well have dropped the academic reputation of Iranian schools to very low levels.
The top schools were similar on the two lists. Of the top 10 schools on The Times’ list, all but one were in the top 13 of the US News list. The Number One school on the British list was American, Cal Tech. The Number One on the American list was British, Cambridge.
The list of the best schools in Asia was totally dominated by schools from just seven countries: Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and India.
