TEHRAN – The Times Higher Education Young University Rankings 2021 listed 26 Iranian institutions among the world’s best universities that are 50 years old or younger.

The Young University Rankings is based on the same 13 performance indicators as the flagship THE World University Rankings, but the weightings have been adjusted to give less weight to reputation.

The universities are judged across all their core missions – teaching, research, knowledge transfer, and international outlook – to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons available.

The 2021 ranking includes 475 universities, up from 414 in 2020.

In 2019, 13 Iranian universities were included in this ranking among 351 universities, in 2020, the number of universities increased to 20.

Kordestan University of Medical Sciences, Kashan University, Shiraz University of Technology, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan University of Technology, Yasuj University, Mohaghegh Ardabili University, University of Kordestan, Shahid Madani University of Azerbaijan, and Kerman University of Medical Sciences are the first top universities among 26 Iranians.

Singapore's Nanyang Technological University tops the list, followed by Paris Sciences et Lettres University and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Performance in 2021

Most recently, some 34 Iranian universities and institutions were listed among the top 1,000 in the world, according to Shanghai Ranking’s Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) 2021.

Some thirty-six Iranian universities have been listed among more than 1,000 major universities worldwide, according to the Center for Science and Technology Studies Leiden Ranking for 2021.

The 2021 Times Higher Education Impact Rankings has listed 27 Iranian universities among the 1,115 most effective institutions worldwide.

Six Iranian universities have been placed among the world’s top universities announced by the prestigious Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings 2021.

Times Higher Education also has published its annual ranking of the world’s top universities for 2021, listing 47 Iranian universities, which shows an increase of 7 universities compared to the last year.

With 47 Iranian universities ranked among 1,527 top universities of 93 countries in the world in 2021 rankings, Iran achieved a great improvement in the academic field.

Some 21 Islamic countries were also listed in the ranking. However, Iran holds the highest share with 47 universities.

With a scientific growth rate of 10.4 percent in 2019, Iran ranked second among the top 25 countries in the world, next to China with a growth rate of 12.9 percent, according to the Web of Science website.

According to statistics released by the International Web of Science Database, Iran's citation rank has always been on the rise over the last eight years, from 24 in 2012 to 16 in 2019.

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