February 24, 2025
The number of Iranian students in US universities climbed again last year but is still not quite back to its record in the 2017-18 academic year.
The Institute of International Education has issued its annual report on the number of foreign students in the US, showing the total from all countries reached an all-time high of 1.1 million in the 2023-24 academic year, having fully recovered from the downturn during the Covid epidemic.
Iran once sent more students to the US than any other country, with the number topping out at more than 50,000 just before the revolution.
As the accompanying table shows, the number of Iranian students fell annually after the revolution until it bottomed out at fewer than 2,000 in 1998. It has climbed back since then, except for a two-year period during Covid. The high was 12,783 in the 2017-18 academic year. The total stood at 12,430 in 2023-24. The figures for this year have not yet been processed.
A total of 82 percent of Iranians are studying at the graduate level, with only 4 percent in undergraduate studies, a vast change from pre-revolutionary days. But back then, the government of Iran provided scholarships for many Iranian students. Now, it will not pay a penny for Iranians to study in the US, Canada or Britain.
It may surprise some that Iran still ranks high in the numbers. It has the 14th largest student population in the US. First place goes to India with 331,000 students last year and the numbers rising in recent years. Third place goes to China with 277,000 last year, though the numbers have been falling in recent years. No other countries sent even 50,000 students.
Foreign students now account for 6 percent of the total university student population in the US.
