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:

Harvard University, USA

Yale University, USA

University of California, Berkeley, USA

Columbia University, USA

University of Chicago, USA

Johns Hopkins University, USA

The University of Texas at Austin, USA

Illinois Institute of Technology, USA

Indiana University, USA

Boston University, USA

University of Kentucky, USA

Saint Joseph’s University, USA

Clemson University, USA

New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA

Ball State University, USA

University of Utah, 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

Temple University, USA

Drexel University, USA

University of South Carolina, USA

Mercer University, USA

Portland State University, USA

Northeastern Illinois University, USA

University of Louisville, USA

Pacific Lutheran University, USA

Queens University, Canada

University of British Colombia, Canada

Carleton University, Canada

University of Manitoba, Canada

Concordia University, Canada

University of Ottawa, Canada

McGill University, Canada

University of Waterloo, Canada

Delhi University, India

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 of Cambridge

University of Oxford

University College London( UCL), UK

Birkbeck College, University of London, UK

University of Bristol, UK

University of Bath, UK

Durham University, UK

University of St Andrews, UK

The University of Edinburgh, UK

The University of Manchester, UK

The University of Warwick, UK

Lancaster University, UK

Loughborough University, UK

University of Exeter, UK

University of York, UK

University of Sussex, UK

University of Nottingham, UK

University of Sheffield, UK

University of Birmingham, UK

University of Liverpool, UK

University of Surrey, UK

Heriot-Watt University, UK

Aston University, UK

University of Kent, UK

Queen Mary University of London, UK

City University London, UK

University of West England, UK

Salford University, UK

University of Leicester, UK

School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), UK

University of Dundee, UK

London Metropolitan University, UK

Anglia Ruskin University, UK

University of Limerick, Republic of Ireland

Oslo University, Norway

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