Five Iranian Religious Seminaries for Every State University

Active Islamic seminaries outnumber state-funded colleges by five to one in Iran, according to new research by Iran Open Data.

Officially, at least 1,120 religious seminaries and specialized jurisprudential centers are engaged in activities and are planning to admit students during the upcoming academic year, the collaborative initiative said in a recent article.

Meanwhile, official statistics show that the total number of public universities and research centers under the Ministry of Science and Medicine is 206.

That number reaches approximately 2,600 when adding tuition-based, non-governmental educational institutions and all technical and vocational centers – about 2.3 times the total number of religious seminaries, Iran Open Data said.

Four hundred Iranian cities are home to at least one seminary.

The central city of Qom has the biggest number of seminaries (122), followed by Mashhad (75) and Tehran (71).

Fifty-six percent of these institutions are men’s religious seminaries. 

The current budget law allocated more than 13 trillion tomans ( $273 million) to religious seminary institutions, but they also receive undisclosed amounts of money from religious endowments, religious taxes and contributions from the government, according to Iran Open Data.

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Iran Open Data's original article in Persian is available here. 

Founded in 2016, Iran Open Data (IOD) strives to make Iran’s official data accessible, available and re-usable. Not only does IOD collect and process raw datasets for researchers and experts, it also publishes exclusive data-driven articles and digital stories for the general public. Additionally, IOD conducts public data calls and surveys on often neglected or taboo issues that are rarely addressed by the government. Follow IOD for all the data-stories concerning Iran.