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.