Cultural and political Obstacles Affecting the Enrollment of International Students

The resent paper tries to examine the cultural and political obstacles preventing the enrollment of international university students. The research method has been applied (in terms of purpose) and descriptive-survey (in terms of data collection method). The statistical population comprises all faculty members (N=575) and international students (N=75) at Shahid Beheshti University; from among these, 234 faculty members were selected through proportional stratified sampling method, and 63 international students were selected via simple random sampling. The research tool was a researcher-made questionnaire whose reliability and validity has been verified. The most significant findings of this study indicate that, from the faculty members’ pointof view, the highest average among cultural obstacles belonged to “inefficiency in motivating and interesting social/cultural space (0.7944.08±)” while the same among political obstacles belonged to “the closed doors of higher education to implementation of new ideas (0.7954.23±)”; form international students’ point of view, the highest averages among cultural obstacles belonged to “holding pessimistic views towards the presence of international students (1.053.84±)” and the same among political obstacles belonged to “the limited familiarity of other nations with Iranian/Islamic culture and civilization (0.7554.09±)”.