Shahid Beheshti University was founded as the National University of Iran in 1959 by Ali Sheikholislam, the first private university in Iran. The university was planned to be devoted to graduate studies. At its opening, it consisted of two schools: Architecture and Urban Planning, and Banking and Economics, with 174 students. Soon the School of Literature and Foreign Languages began in downtown Tehran. The first graduate academic degree program was the Master's course in the School of Architecture, launched in 1961. In 1962, a new main campus was built in Evin, a suburb in the north of Tehran. Academic offerings expanded as facilities were added. By 1978 several other faculties became active i.e.the faculties of Literature and Human Sciences, Basic Sciences, Law, Earth Sciences, Statistics and Informatics and Education and Psychology. Due to an academic reform in 1986, the medical schools were separated from the main universities and became Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences working under the purview of the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education. The first PhD course was offered in the School of Economics in 1991. The university's name was changed during the Cultural Revolution in Iranian universities, 1980-82. Under royal auspices, the university library began to acquire important collections in the field of Oriental studies and literary classics in French and German. During that period, the university library ranked in importance second in the country only to Aryamehr (later Sharif) University of Technology. In 2012, the university's new main office building was completed.[2] In spring 2013, Power and Water University of Technology (PWUT) was merged into Shahid Beheshti University.