Acceptance International Students to the Iranian Higher Education System and the Challenges Ahead

The purpose of this study was to investigate the challenges of accepting international students to the Iranian higher education system since the existing studies and experiences indicate a variety of problems in accepting international students in the higher education system in Iran. On the other hand, according to the Sixth Development Plan, there is a long way in order to reach to the goal of increasing the accepting international students. Therefore, in order to achieve these goals and increase international students, it is necessary to understand the existing obstacles and shortcomings. Therefore, the qualitative method has been used in order to achieve the purpose of the study. Moreover, the tools of data collection were semi-structured. The population of study was the faculty members of public comprehensive universities in Tehran. The samples of this study were also selected in the form of snowball. The results of the interviews were also analyzed using the thematic method. The findings indicate that the major challenges for accepting the international students can be categorized into five dimensions: educational, cultural and social barriers, economic barriers, political barriers, and structural / management categories. Finally, according to the results of this study, several suggestions were made to address the challenges for the accepting the international students in the higher education systems of Iran.