Journal of Iranian Higher Education
Year:2019 | Volume:10 | Issue:4 |Papers Count:6

The concept of the adaptive university addresses the problem of the relationship between the university and the environment by considering the changes that are required and emerging in order to create the dynamic equilibrium for the university's existence within changes. University can not have a dynamic life if the changes are only the top-down demands and missions assigned by the high leaders of the university. Each university needs innovations and original approaches in order to keep its survival, within the changes and dynamism of the scientific societies. How is it possible? Does not it need internal dynamism besides the dynamism of the surrounding systems? The university is a living organization and a dynamic system and so it must be adaptive for its survival and also its progress. But what is the adaption? How the survival and development of the university can be possible within the internal and external changes? Are they automatic or only a moment in life? This article reflects on these questions and presents some principles for adaptive universities by the study of scientific researches and the author’ s observations in other universities (Montreal, Toronto, McGill, Sherbrook… ) in different years.

One of the most important components in the university teaching-learning context is the relationship between teacher and student. The formation of scientific groups is a new action that is running by the National Elite Foundation. In this time, one of the most important issues of the National Elite Foundation is the recognition of administrative requirements for the Strengthen and expansion of the scientific group in universities. This research seeks to discover the important factors influencing the leadership of the scientific groups of National Elite Foundation, so that it can manage and lead these scientific groups more effectively and efficiently. This research is a general qualitative research with a qualitative and exploratory approach. In this study, according to the purpose of the research a multi-case study strategy is used. In order to analyze the data, thematic analysis is used through the MAXQDA software. Cases in this research are scientific groups sponsored by National Elite Foundation. Data and information were collected through interviewing, holding focus group meetings, scientific experiments at universities of the world, and reports from groups. After data analysis, 547 primary concepts were extracted. Studying the themes repeatedly, they were modified that resulted in the network thematic consisted of 122 basic themes, 16 organized theme and 4 global themes. The areas of scientific group activities organization and internal administration of scientific group, governance system of scientific group and results and impact of scientific group were four global themes, which organized themes and basic themes and were placed there.

In recent years, due to the emergence of new ideas such as the new public management approach, knowledge-based societies and economies, and globalization, the concepts of efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability in the public sector have attracted more attention to themselves. In this regard, Higher education in Iran has been influenced by the upstream documents, to shift its governance approach towards commercialization. The main purpose of this paper is the study of the convergence of university governance and quasi-market actions in Iran's higher education. In order to achieve this goal, a mixed-sequential approach was used. In the qualitative phase of research, by reviewing the existing documents and researches and conducting semi-structured in-depth interviews with 9 purposefully selected experts in the field of higher education, continued to achieve theoretical saturation, indicators of market-oriented governance (quasi-commercial) were identified. This model includes four dimensions as follows: contextual, financial, scientific and organizational. In order to validate the theoretical model, the confirmatory factor analysis was performed. Goodness-of-fit Indices showed confirmation of the research model and comparing the mean of the sample and the assumed mean by using one-sample t-test indicated that the university governance in Iran's higher education was not consistent with the commercialization approach proposed in the upstream documents.

In the direction of the development of science and technology diplomacy and the production of soft power, the internationalization of higher education institutions has been attended by academic experts and leaders in recent decades. International higher education has become to certain policy of higher education development in developed and progressives countries as a symbol of higher education validity and national development symbol. The internationalization of higher education has selected as one of the science and technology policies in Iran, after the nuclear deal. In this horizon is triad the international activities of the Iranian higher education system is extended with emphasis on special countries especially neighbors and the Islamic world. International higher education has different dimensions that the student mobility and attraction of external students is one of its most important and traditional indicators. The current paper studied the necessity and mechanism for training and development of universities' human resources in attitude, knowledge and skill dimensions with the aim of external students satisfaction and increasing the probability of their retention and loyalty, using the qualitative meta-analysis method. The staff faced with international students need to train and develop in attitude dimension like understanding of international activities value, magnanimous and perception of cultural differences and customer orientation; in knowledge dimension like recognition of higher education system and courses, awareness from socio-cultural status of countries and hospitality; skill dimension like suitable communicative language, interpersonal interaction according to academic and public culture, ability and competency for accurate execution of educational-student duties and roles and accountability. The current research has a strategy for designing and implementing a special training and development package in universities that have internationalization strategy, for the staff faced with international students, using the scientific method and with the help of human resources development experts.

The present research intends to identify and analyze the strategic planning process at Hakim Sabzevari University and to explore the barriers that inhibit this process. Therefore, in this study, a mixed research method has been used. In the qualitative section, the method of thematic analysis was used by interviewing 19 employees and informants. Friedman Test and Interpretative Structural Modeling have been used to rank the strategic planning barriers and design a model to represent these factors. Since the ISM (Interpretive Structural Modeling) approach is based on expert opinion, 32 expert opinions in the field of the University were elicited. According to the obtained model, the most significant factor which constituted the cornerstone of the model was “ managerial instability” . The results of this research led to the ranking of the barriers of the academic strategic planning process and the design of a model representing these factors. The findings also showed that the lack of development strategy, the lack of culture and planning thinking and the lack of deployment of strategic planning are the most important barriers for the academic strategic planning process respectively. Moreover, the heterogeneity of financial status and administrative demands was ranked at the end.

The purpose of this study was to design an innovative university model in the context of the innovation ecosystem in Iran and to identify the components of the innovation ecosystem and innovative universities. The methodology of the research was grounded theory. The statistical population of this study was all faculty members of the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, Institute of Research and Planning of Higher Education, managers and experts of the Organization of Scientific and Industrial Researches of Iran, managers and experts of small industries and industrial towns of Iran, Members of the Association of Industrial and University Professors, experts, directors and faculty members were members of the offices related to university and industry, innovation and technology at the State Technical Schools, Azad University and Farhangian universities, and the Center for Scientific Research and Policy. The purpose of the sampling was to reach the theoretical saturation limit. The interviewees were selected through a snowball method using semi-structured interviews. The analysis of the results was done by the qualitative researcher and the content analysis of the interviews and three-step coding based on the Grounded Theory (GT) using the software MAXQDA in order to designed and analyze the model.