The city is home to the Islamic Azad University of Sabzevar (IAUS), founded in 1985 in response to increasing demands for a higher education center in the region; expansion and development have always continued within the university.
Khorasan in its proper sense comprised principally the cities of Mashhad, Nishapur and Sabzevar (now in northeastern Iran), Balkh, Herat and Taloqan (now in Afghanistan), Merv, Nisa and Abiward (now in southern Turkmenistan), and Samarqand and Bukhara (now in Uzbekistan).
There were other compact settlements in Khorasan at Abbas Abad (half-way between Shahrood and Sabzevar where there remained only one old woman who remembered Georgian in 1934), Mazandaran at Behshahr and Farah Abad, Gilan, Isfahan Province at Najafabad, Badrud, Rahmatabad, Yazdanshahr and Amir Abad.