TEHRAN, Aug. 20 (Mehr News Agency) -- Minister of Science, Research and Technology Mohammad-Mehdi Zahedi here on Tuesday said that university students comprise five percent of Iranian's 70 million population.

Iranian women graduating from Tehran's Technical University (May 2007)

Speaking at a press conference held on the occasion of the Week of Government, Zahedi said that university students make up about 3.5 million of Iran's total population, and by the next Iranian calendar year of 1388 (2008-2009), "the figure is expected to reach over 3.6 million."

University student numbers had risen from about 2.150 million in 2005 to over 3.5 million in 2008, Zahedi said, stressing that there was a 100% increase in number of university students doing a master's degree and PHD over the past three years.

Iran's university capacity for master's degree has reached to 40 thousands in 2008 from about 20 thousands in 2005 and the universities' PHD capacity has reached to 4 thousands in 2008 from 2 thousands in 2005.

Twofold increase in number of faculty members

He also referred to a 50% increase in number of Iran's faculty members and said, "There was a more than twofold increase in the number of faculty members over the past three years."

Elsewhere in his remarks, he said, "we have great scientific advances," stemmed from intellectual curiosity, and there was an increase in number of scientific articles indexed by the International Scientific Index (ISI) in 2008 compared with last year.