In the age of knowledge-based economy and the emergence globalization and internationalization, and consequently the growing emphasis on improving the level of standards and quality of goods, products and services, we see worldwide efforts by all institutions to have a greater share in the target markets. As a result, in recent decades, we have witnessed the formation of professional ranking organizations. Therefore, the emergence of a significant range of ranking systems in the field of higher education and academic institutions around the world is also meant on this basis. Therefore this paper aims to critically analyze the status of Iranian higher education system in the world ranking systems and relevant factors affecting their low positions respectively. This study seeks to investigate the existing facts and answer questions related to the current state of the Iranian higher education system, in what areas and contexts of the ranking systems has been weakened and what strategies have been used leading to the position of our country's universities in the world rankings can be promoted. Therefore as a qualitative research, this study aims to investigate external challenges of Iran's higher education system based on the global rankings’ indicators in which Ruth Wodak method of critical discourse analysis was applied. Participants included 16 scholars and senior officials from Higher Education Institutions in Tehran whose were selected via snowball sampling method. Semi-structured interviews were applied to collect data based on theoretical saturation
