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Iran, with its young and highly literate population, constitutes one of the main higher education markets in the Middle East region. Having now developed a highly comprehensive higher education sector, a result of the efforts to advance the higher education system following the Islamic Revolution in 1979, it is of no surprise that more than four million Iranians are currently enrolled in higher education institutions in Iran. Regardless of these developments, however, meeting the increasing demand for tertiary education has been a challenge leading to a large number of Iranians pursuing tertiary education opportunities overseas. This has created a vast and promising market for student importing countries, which has proved to be too difficult for international student recruiters to penetrate due to international sanctions imposed on Iran and local economic problems coupled with certain restrictions imposed internally by the ruling authorities. Despite the challenges of not being politically recognised as legitimate except by Turkey, North Cyprus has been one of the most popular destinations for Iranian students particularly in the last decade. Relative to its size, North Cyprus has proved to be one of the most internationalised higher education system in the world with more than 30,000 international students from more than 100 different countries and more significantly, Iranian students constitute one of the largest cohort. This chapter explores the student recruitment process from Iran with a specific focus on the external and internal challenges faced by the students as well as by the recruiters. North Cyprus is particularly evaluated as a case study to present how some challenges may have been overcome and student flow can be achieved even to a country that has been struggling against the externalities of international political non-recognition.

The purpose of this paper is to examine faculty members’ views about the assessment of world-class university components in Iran’s comprehensive universities.

This study adopted a descriptive methodology by using a survey method. The statistical population consisted of 8,548 faculty members of comprehensive universities all over Iran. Considering the large size of the population, the comprehensive universities were categorized into five clusters (North, South, East, West and Center). The authors selected the faculty members from different clusters using Cochran’s formula. A total of 367 faculty members were selected from five clusters. For data gathering, a researcher-designed questionnaire was used. In data analysis, statistical procedures including the Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Kolmogrov-Smirnov test, one-sample t-test, and Friedman test were performed.

The findings of the research showed that except for academic freedom, other components of world-class university in Iran’s comprehensive universities were lower than the mean.

The case study showed how Iran’s comprehensive universities can become world-class universities. The methods of this case study can also be used in other fields.

This study adds to the knowledge of a world-class universities. Therefore to reach a desired level in comprehensive universities’ preparation for converting to a world-class university, it is essential that the policy makers and organizers of Iran’s higher education system pay greater attention to items such as research motivation, research innovation, research budget increase, authority reduction on various university departments, internet bandwidth increase and laboratory facilities increase.

The purpose of this paper is to predict the number of undergraduate applicants for the National Entrance Examination in Iran during 2012-2025 periods and to identity the factors affecting the demand for higher education in Iran.

In this paper, the method of cohort, participation rate, structural regression and time series econometric models have been used. In the present study, it has been predicted by using four methods mentioned and at the next step, in addition to identifying effective factors, the results given from these four methods have been compared with each other. Furthermore, the most important factors influencing university enrollment decision have been identified by econometric method.

The results of estimating the number of the criteria applicants, show that the tendency to pursue studies is different between males and females. Therefore, their structural models differ from each other. The results of forecast in structural method support the high effectiveness of economic growth index. Most predictions are often confirmed the reduction in the number of applicants during the 2012-2025 period, especially for men.

This paper can be helpful in opening up a discourse around cross-cultural elements in higher education demands and planning for higher education.

It’s important to forecast the demand for higher education using different methods, and to compare the results for specific countries.

Service quality in tourism and hospitality is intimately connected to human resources, which can be cultivated by enhancing workforce skills through training. This chapter probes challenges faced by the expanding tourism higher education in Mashhad, Iran. This growth, partly related to the current or potential development of the industry, is also associated with the general growth dynamics of Iran’s education system. As such, it may have an insufficient connection to the requirements of the job market. The study utilizes results from two focus group sessions organized with educators and tourism service providers in Mashhad. The findings reveal limited practical training, weak instruction, inappropriate course contents, and lack of motivation to have aggravated the gap between higher education and industry needs.

This paper aims to report the process and outcomes of a case study which introduced internal evaluation procedures into academic departments of a university in Iran. The purpose of the study was to identify what benefits could arise from using internal evaluation, and what obstacles existed to its successful introduction.

This paper reports a case study of internal evaluation within the academic departments of a university in Iran. The case study research used a range of methods to collect information on the operation of the intervention. This paper addresses the findings of a recent longitudinal research in relation to the issue of internal evaluation. A qualitative methodology was used to gain the perceptions of faculty members and department directors and reactions to the effects of the internal evaluation on their work and improvement of department quality. The methods of data collection included interviews, group discussions and workshops.

It was concluded in the study that internal evaluation processes are potentially valuable in Iranian universities but, if this value is to be realized on a continuous basis, particularly in the absence of external evaluation as an incentive, then it needs to become an integral part of each department, university, and the nationally accepted framework of quality assurance and management.

The research was only conducted in 23 academic departments where the departmental heads and members of faculty were in agreement with the pilot introduction of internal evaluation.

There are considerable implications for the changes that would be needed in management and decision‐making structures if the internal evaluation is to be fully effective.

The paper is of value because there is considerable interest in systems of internal evaluation in universities, but there are few studies in developing countries and, in particular, there is no previous research in Iran.

Higher education and universities have faced unprecedented and ubiquitous changes. The University of Tehran or “UT,” as the leading university in Iran, is not immune to these changes. The purposes of this study is to investigate the current situation and future of the UT and gain insights and possible responses to changes that suit its strengths and potential to progress in an increasingly competitive, complex environment with uncertainties. It identifies deep fundamental underpinnings of the issue and highlights them for policymakers to formulate strategies and future vision of the UT.

Causal layered analysis (CLA) was applied as a framework and the data collected from different sources such as literature reviews, content analysis of rules, regulations and master plans of the university and coded interviews of four different groups of university stakeholders were analyzed. The current system of UT, as well as hidden beliefs, that maintains traditional perceptions about university was mapped. Next, by applying a new recursive process and reverse CLA order, new CLA layers extracted through an expert panel, the layers of CLA based on new metaphors to envision future of UT were backcasted.

The results from CLA layers including litany, system, worldview and metaphor about the current statue of UT show disinterest and inertia against changes, conservative, behind the times and traditional perceptions, and indicate that the UT system is mismatched to the needs of society and stakeholders in the future. The authors articulated alternative perspectives deconstructed from other worldviews so there are new narratives that reframe the issues at hand. The results show that to survive in this fast-paced revolution and competition in higher education, UT should develop scenarios and formulate new strategies.

The authors had limited access to a wide range of stakeholders. As the UT is a very big university with so many faculties and departments, to access a pool of experts and top policymakers who were so busy and did not have time to interview inside and outside of university was very hard for the research team. The authors also had limitation to access the internal enactments and decisions of the trustee board of the UT and the financial balance sheets of the university.

In this paper, by mixing different methods of futures studies, the authors have shown how to move forward while understanding the perspectives of stakeholders about the future of UT by a new recursive process and reverse CLA order. A supplementary phase was added to improve CLA and to validate the method and results, which were ignored in previous studies.

The purpose of this paper is to answer the question of how scientific excellency can be achieved. The origin of scientific excellency in Iran, national and international experiences concerning the subject has been investigated to review the literature. The authors also designed a process and then a model to test the course. Guilan University of Medical Sciences was selected as a case study for the research.

The approach used in this paper is from Future Studies, with emphasis on the “Participatory Learning and Action” method. It means that different stakeholders, including the strategic council members, managers, faculty members, students, alumni and non-academic staff, have been involved in different parts of the process.

After semantic analysis of scientific excellency in the theoretical field; the examination of national and international experiences in universities; the analysis of higher-level documents of the Ministry of Health and Medical Education as well as strategic documents of the university; the determination of the strengths and weaknesses of the Guilan University of Medical Sciences in online survey; the completion of the scientific excellency canvas in the expert panel and finally obtaining other stakeholders, a conceptual model was designed for achieving scientific excellency.

The study of the actions, policies and trends of pioneering universities indicates that it is important to consider issues such as the internationalization of education and research and the modification of university structures. To achieve a superior national and international status, the university must specifically enhance a range of different aspects, from intangible aspects, such as motivation of employees to tangible aspects, such as human resources, structure and facilities.

Scientific excellency is going to be one of main streams between universities to attract top students and researchers from all over the world. There has been little academic attempt on scientific excellency. In this research, first the authors examined the concept of scientific excellency, criteria and measurement in higher education, then based on that case study and participatory action learning method, a conceptual framework to achieve scientific excellency in Iran’s higher education system was proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the barriers and challenges to international interactions of the faculty members in Iran.

To achieve the purpose, a qualitative phenomenological approach was used. The research population was all experts in the field of higher education in Iran, it included 17 experts who were selected through purposeful sampling by snowball method and based on theoretical saturation. To collect the data, a semi-structured interview was used and for the data analysis, an inductive content analysis was applied.

The findings showed that the barriers and challenges to faculty members’ international interactions can be defined through three main barriers: inside university barriers, outside university barriers, and individual barriers.

This research identified the barriers and challenges of faculty members’ international interactions in Iran. The method of this study can be applied in other applied fields as well.

This study adds to the authors’ knowledge about international interactions of the faculty members and also the barriers and challenges of these interactions, so to have more interactions of faculty members at the international level, universities should make an effort to identify barriers and eliminate them, more than ever.

Entrepreneurship is known to be important to the economy, and many scholars across the globe have researched it from a number of viewpoints. Currently, there is a need for an academic study to explore this area by combining sustainability value creating practices and the efforts of current entrepreneurs towards the said target, particularly in the case of the agricultural sector. While the entrepreneurship studies have mostly focused on the determinants of entrepreneurial opportunity recognition, few studies have attempted to analyze the factors influencing the entrepreneurial alertness (EA) of students, especially in relation to agricultural students. To fill this gap, this work investigated the impact of human and social capital on EA among the students of agricultural higher education in Iran.

The sample consisted of 254 agricultural students in higher education from Ilam province in the Islamic Republic of Iran, selected by the stratified random sampling method for the study. Modeling of structural equations was used in inferential statistics.

According to the results of the trial, human resources and social capital (SC) have been seen to have a strong, optimistic and measurable impact on EA. Key findings also show that human capital (HC) has an indirect, optimistic and important effect on EA through the mediator role of SC. Establishing higher education science teams, groups, networks and associations can foster opportunities to create and develop relationships and communication between agricultural students and entrepreneurs.

These findings illustrate the value of human and social resources in fostering entrepreneurship alertness among Iranian students of agricultural higher education. Considering the research results, the authors recommend some theoretical and realistic implications and suggestions for ways of promoting and increasing EA among farm students to encourage sustainable growth of agricultural careers in western Iran.