Tehran, Iran, September 25
By Dalga Khatinoglu, Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:
Iranian students in the US have increased in number by 500 percent over the past 10 years and the number continues to grow every year, Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff said.
Academic cooperation with Iran is facilitated in the US as part of the US policy to increase relations between Iranian and American people, she told Trend September 24.
Praising in increasing number as “noteworthy”, Nowrouzzadeh noted however that “We have not seen any special growth with the JCPOA, but academic relations between Iran and the US are historical.”
Iranian officials have been for long complaining about severe a brain drain that carries the most talented students away.
From 2012 to 2014, at least 40 percent of top-performing students with undergraduate degrees in science and engineering left the country to pursue advanced degrees, according to Iran’s National Elites Foundation, a government-run organization that supports academically gifted and high-achieving students.
From 2009-13, net emigration from Iran was 300,000, according to the World Bank. The number of Iranians studying in the U.S. increased 25 percent, to more than 8,700, in the 2012-13 academic year, according to the Institute of International Education. Many won’t return. According to a 2012 survey by the Arlington, Va.-based National Science Foundation, 89 percent of Iranian doctoral students remain in the U.S. after graduation—equal to the Chinese and the highest percentage of nationalities surveyed.