A Newsweek article showers lavish praise on Iran’s Sharif University of Technology and its students.
http://www.newsweek.com/2008/08/08/the-star-students-of-the-islamic-republic.html
Here is a quote from the article: “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.”
The article paints a picture of why, despite economic and political hardships in Iran, students of Sharif and a few other elite universities thrive and are highly sought-after by American, Canadian, and Australian universities. It also accurately portrays the serious problem of brain drain caused by universities and tech companies in the West aggressively recruiting top Iranian students.
Science/technology education and research are intimately related, as I had pointed out in my comment on a different post of mine. One key point in my earlier comment was that if scientists are not allowed to publish freely and to participate in international scientific forums, they may take all their current and future ideas with them to a different country. Now we see that the problem starts much earlier and Iranian scholars are targeted for recruitment even before they have become productive researchers.
