Aug. 18-25, 2008 issue
In 2003, administrators at Stanford
University's Electrical Engineering Department were startled when a group of
foreign students aced the notoriously difficult Ph.D. entrance exam, getting
some of the highest scores ever. That the whiz kids weren't American wasn't odd;
students from Asia and elsewhere excel in U.S. programs. The surprising thing,
say Stanford administrators, is that the majority came from one country and one
school: Sharif University of Science and Technology in Iran.
Stanford has become a favorite destination of Sharif grads. Bruce A. Wooley,
a former chair of the Electrical Engineering Department, has said that's because
Sharif now has one of the best undergraduate electrical-engineering programs in
the world. That's no small praise given its competition: MIT, Caltech and
Stanford in the United States, Tsinghua in China and Cambridge in Britain.
Sharif's reputation highlights how while Iran makes headlines for President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's incendiary remarks and its nuclear showdown with the
United States, Iranian students are developing an international reputation as
science superstars. Stanford's administrators aren't the only ones to notice.
Universities across Canada and Australia, where visa restrictions are lower,
report a big boom in the Iranian recruits; Canada has seen its total number of
Iranian students grow 240 percent since 1985, while Australian press reports
point to a fivefold increase over the past five years, to nearly 1,500.
Iranian students from Sharif and other top schools, such as the University of
Tehran and the Isfahan University of Technology, have also become major players
in the international Science Olympics, taking home trophies in physics,
mathematics, chemistry and robotics. As a testament to this newfound success,
the Iranian city of Isfahan recently hosted the International Physics
Olympiad—an honor no other Middle Eastern country has enjoyed. That's because
none of Iran's neighbors can match the quality of its scholars.
Never far behind, Western tech companies have also started snatching them up.
Silicon Valley companies from Google to Yahoo now employ hundreds of Iranian
grads, as do research institutes throughout the West. Olympiad winners are
especially attractive; according to the Iranian press, up to 90 percent of them
now leave the country for graduate school or work abroad.
So what explains Iran's record, and that of Sharif in particular? The country
suffers from many serious ills, such as chronic inflation, stagnant wages and an
anemic private sector, thanks to poor economic management and a weak regulatory
environment. University professors barely make ends meet—the pay is so bad some
must even take second jobs as taxi drivers or petty traders. International
sanctions also make life difficult, delaying the importation of scientific
equipment, for example, and increasing isolation. Until recently, Iranians were
banned from publishing in the journals of the Institute for Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the industry's key international professional
association. They also face the indignity of often having their visa
applications refused when they try to attend conferences in the West.
Yet Sharif and its ilk continue to thrive. Part of the explanation, says
Mohammad Mansouri, a Sharif grad ('97) who's now a professor in New York, lies
in the tendency of Iranian parents to push their kids into medicine or
engineering as opposed to other fields, like law. Sharif also has an extremely
rigorous selection process. Every year some 1.5 million Iranian high-school
students take college-entrance exams. Of those, only about 10 percent make it to
the prestigious state schools, with the top 1 percent generally choosing science
and finding their way to top spots such as Sharif. "The selection process
[gives] universities like Sharif the smartest, most motivated and hardworking
students" in the country, Mansouri says.
Sharif also boasts an excellent faculty. The university was founded in 1965
by the shah, who wanted to build a topnotch science and technology institute.
The school was set up under the guidance of MIT advisers, and many of the
current faculty studied in the United States (during the shah's era, Iranians
made up the largest group of foreign students at U.S. schools, according to the
Institute of International Education). Another secret of Sharif's success is
Iran's high-school system, which places a premium on science and exposes
students to subjects Americans don't encounter until college. This tradition of
advanced studies extends into undergraduate programs, with Mansouri and others
saying they were taught subjects in college that U.S. schools provide only to
grad students.
Several Sharif alumni point to one other powerful motivator. "When you live
in Iran and you see all the frustrations of daily life, you dream of leaving the
country, and your books and studies become a ticket to a better life," says one
who asked not to be identified. "It becomes more than just studying," he says.
"It becomes an obsession, where you wake up at 4 a.m. just to get in a few more
hours before class."