International Recognition
Since its inception more than three and half decades ago, BIHE and its graduates have cherished the ambition for formal accreditation of its programs by official, reliable, and credible accreditation agencies. The belief that such accreditation would open more opportunities for further education and employment for its graduates fuels this ambition. To this end, during the past years, BIHE, both nationally and internationally, has implemented and followed various measures abroad.
It should be noted that the accreditation of BIHE degrees is not simply a matter of satisfying standards, requirements, qualifications, and quality assurance procedures, the default route for accreditation of any normal university degree. Due to the very particular and unnatural situation of the Bahá’í community and BIHE in Iran, this normal avenue has been blocked. International protocols precondition any accreditation on recognition of the university in its home country by its government. In case of BIHE, due to the evident, systematic oppression of the Bahá’í community in Iran, the government not only refuses to recognize BIHE, but even attacks and arrests its staff and attempts to shut down its operations. The Iranian Ministry of Education even refuses to recognize the credentials of those BIHE graduates who have been awarded masters or doctoral degrees by prestigious universities abroad and returned to Iran, with the excuse that their first degree is not recognized.
Due to this constitutional obstacle, many accreditation authorities and institutions fail to even start an assessment process. However, these accreditation bodies admit that the quality and the content of the BIHE programs, and the success of its graduates both in admission to and graduation from top universities in Europe and North America and in their careers in academia or industry, confirm the high academic standards of BIHE programs and the knowledge and skills of its graduates. This realization has motivated some of these accreditation bodies to invite universities and employers to assess BIHE graduates on a case-by-case basis and accept them at their own discretion. In fact, many universities worldwide do accept BIHE graduates in this manner as they have sufficient knowledge of BIHE's work to feel assured of the ability of students to progress successfully.
BIHE records at least 115 universities worldwide that have accepted BIHE undergraduate and master’s degree as a basis for admission. Here is the list of these universities:
University of California, Berkeley, USA
University of Chicago, USA
Johns Hopkins University, USA
The University of Texas at Austin, USA
Illinois Institute of Technology, USA
University of Kentucky, USA
Saint Joseph’s University, USA
New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA
Ball State University, USA
California State University, Fullerton, USA
The University of Texas at Arlington, USA
University of Missouri, Kansas City, USA
San Jose State University, USA
The University of New Mexico, USA
University of South Carolina, USA
Portland State University, USA
Northeastern Illinois University, USA
University of Louisville, USA
Pacific Lutheran University, USA
Queens University, Canada
University of British Columbia, Canada
Carleton University, Canada
University of Manitoba, Canada
Concordia University, Canada
University of Ottawa, Canada
McGill University, Canada
University of Waterloo, Canada
Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
University of Pune, India
Indian Institute of Information Technology, India
International Institute of Information Technology (I Square IT), India
Bangalore University, India
University College London( UCL), UK
Birkbeck College, University of London, UK
University of Bristol, UK
University of St Andrews, UK
The University of Edinburgh, UK
The University of Manchester, UK
The University of Warwick, UK
Loughborough University, UK
University of Nottingham, UK
University of Sheffield, UK
University of Birmingham, UK
University of Liverpool, UK
Heriot-Watt University, UK
Queen Mary University of London, UK
City University London, UK
University of West England, UK
University of Leicester, UK
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), UK
London Metropolitan University, UK
Anglia Ruskin University, UK
University of Limerick, Republic of Ireland
Norwegian School of Theology, Norway
University of Jyvaskyla, Finland
Université d'Orléans,France
Université Pierre & Marie Curie,France
Jean Monnet University,France
Delft University of Technology(TU Delft), Netherlands
Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
University of Bonn,Germany
University of Kaiserslautern, Germany
Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany
University of Bayreuth, Germany
University of Passau, Germany
Technical University of Berlin(TU Berlin), Germany
University of Pisa, Italy
Vienna University of Technology, Austria
University of Minho, Portugal
National Technical University of Athens, Greece
University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
The University of Adelaide, Australia
University of Wollongong, Australia
University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
University of South Australia, Australia
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand