Abstract
Over the last two decades of the twentieth century, Iran, like many societies, witnessed the expansion of higher education. During this period, governmental, nongovernmental, and private universities were established, and the number of faculty members and students increased drastically. With the start of the new millennium, the government’s policy in higher education was changed from emphasis on training to research. As a result, in 2012 Iran gained the world’s 17th rank in science production and fixed its top position in the region of Middle East, above Turkey. Despite the overall progress, Iran’s higher education research is faced with challenges. The present paper has five sections. The first section is an overview of higher education in Iran. The second part explains the quantitative growth of higher education in the past three decades (1984–2014). The third part demonstrates the qualitative development of Iran’s higher education research with more detail. The fourth section indicates some of the most important challenges of higher education research in contemporary Iran. Article ends with a discussion and conclusions.
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Arani, A.M., Kakia, L., Malek, M.J. (2018). Higher Education Research in Iran: Quantitative Development and Qualitative Challenges. In: Jung, J., Horta, H., Yonezawa, A. (eds) Researching Higher Education in Asia. Higher Education in Asia: Quality, Excellence and Governance. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4989-7_18
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