323policy turned to the establishment of master’s and PhD courses. It has gone so far
that the president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, in a rather critical tone said: “I will be
very happy to hear that we have 40,000 Ph.D. students in Iran. However, let’s look
at the famous universities in the world and see how many Ph.D. students each of
them have” (Adib 2014 ). The overeducation crisis had created many social prob-
lems, but one of its worst consequences is brain drain. Iran’s former Minister of
Science, Research and Technology Reza Faraji Dana said, “Every year, about
150,000 highly talented people emigrate from Iran, equaling an annual loss of $150
billion to the economy.” Though the monetary value may be inaccurate (the World
Bank put the economic cost of Iran’s brain drain at $50 billion in 2010), the fact is
that Iran has experienced one of the highest levels of brain drain over the past
decades. According to the International Monetary Fund, Iran has the highest brain
drain rate in the world. An estimated 25% of all Iranians with postsecondary educa-
tion now live in “developed” countries of the OECD (Khajehpour 2014 ). On the
other side, it must be admitted that the increase in the number of master’s and doc-
toral students provided a golden opportunity to do more research. At the same time,
economic incentives (increase of salary) combined with high rate of inflation – due
to political sanctions against Iran – encourage many faculty members to try their
best to publish more articles and books. A report by present Ministry of Sciences,
Research and Technology reveals that Iran ranked fourth in terms of growth rate in
science in the world. The report also stated that Iran experienced 2% growth in the
field of production of scientific articles and 6% growth in the field of production of
world science (IRNA 2016 ).
Despite these quantitative progresses, we referred to a number of major chal-
lenges of higher education research in Iran. Indeed, one component of the faculty
member’s quality of work life is interaction, communication, and collaborative
activities among them (Suchan 2008 ). This can be manifested in the participation of
faculty members in academic networks such as scientific communities, board of
editors, and research group projects. Nourshahi and Samii ( 2011 ) reveal that among
693 faculty members of governmental universities in Iran, the largest number of
respondents indicated a moderate level of activities. Another finding of the research
shows that half of the faculty members feel their academic freedom as average.
Interestingly, faculty members indicated self-censorship as a master of the obstacles
to their academic freedom. In fact, self-censorship is a system of automatic defense
against the onslaught of attacks that is more common among faculties of human
sciences. In a general conclusion, we believe that in Iran the prospects for higher
education research in the next decade can be positive and represents a growing
trend. There are several reasons for this optimism. First, there is sufficiency on
research budget due to improvement of economic conditions of the country –
because of recent political agreement between Iran and western countries. Second,
there is a decreasing trend in the number of students and therefor sufficient time of
scientific staffs for performing research duties. Third, there are new reforms on aims
and policies of higher education research, and finally, there are increasing team
spirit and research group activities among faculty members because of development
of interdisciplinary subjects.
18 Higher Education Research in Iran: Quantitative Development and Qualitative...