JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND PLANNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Year:2006 | Volume:12 | Issue:1 (39)|Papers Count:8

The purpose of this study is to examine the quality of college teaching. University Teacher Evaluation Questionnaire (UTEQ) was administered to student at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM). This instrument operationalizes four main dimensions in evaluation of teaching in higher education: Teaching plan, teaching implementation, teaching evaluation and interpersonal relationship. A sample of 196 undergraduate students were randomly selected for data collection in teaching quality. The data were analyzed taking into consideration both descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage and mean) and inferential statistics (T test and ANOVA). The results indicated that there is a significant relationship between the level of quality teaching needed and the level of quality teaching existed and   teaching plan was perceived by majority of the respondents as top priority.

The main purpose of the research is to investigate causal test anxiety among college students and how to cope with it. The sample under investigation consisted of 200 students from a university in Mohaghegh Ardebili University. Expost – facto research method is used and a correlation analysis is also conducted to explore the relationships of variables of interest. The researchers’ questionnaire, Mehregan’s test anxiety questionnaire and Najarian’s general anxiety scale were used to gather data. The results show that:There is a significant difference between males and females based on the anxiety variable (p<0.05). There is a significant difference between males and females based on the general anxiety variable (p<0.05). There is a significant positive relationship between test anxiety and general anxiety (p<0.05). Coping methods had significant negative relationships with test anxiety and general anxiety (p<0.05). Lacd of concentration, abstraction and inappropriateness of test environment affect the students’ test anxiety. Out of coping methods, the students use invocation of God and cognitive-behavioral techniques more than others.

This research is designed to study the employment’s situation among female graduates in different majors. The Sample of study includes 292 graduates form university of Mazandaran. The data has been collected by questionnaire and then it has been analyzed by descriptive and inferential procedures. The research results show that 56.9 percent of female graduates were employed and 43 percent were unemployed. Among employed, 56 percent worked in service sector, 32% in industry and 10 percent were employed in agriculture sector. In addition 84 percent of the individual field of studies were technical and engineering, 56 percent humanities, 50 percent basic sciences, and 38 percent agriculture sciences. Factors affecting women’s employment in labor market were: instructional qualities, labor market’s needs, and practical skills. Also, female graduates faced with the following obstacles: too many graduates, limited relations with employers, and lack of information about labor market’s needs.

Department Chairs are among the most important resources in higher education system. However, they have rarly been studied scientifically. Hence, the present study aims to investigate the aforementioned matter and explore the relationship between triple skills of department chairs and educational quality in 18 departments in Tarbiat Moallem University through correlation method. The skills of department chairs in three aspects of technical, human relation and conceptual including 18 special skills and the educational quality in terms of 14 performance indicators of higher education were also studied. The relationship between skills and educational quality were measured. Statistical population in this study covered all members of faculty of 18 departments who were involved in teaching during the first semester of 2005-06 academic year. Among statistical population, 172 members were selected through stratified random sampling method. Two questionnaires prepared by the researcher were used for data collection. Then, the data was analyzed and correlation was measured. The result of this study showed that: The existence of a meaningful and positive correlation between technical as well as conceptual skills department heads and their educational quality was proved. But the correlation between human relation skills and educational quality wasn’t observed.

The overall purpose of this study was identifying the effective educational factors on graduates job ability and job success in agricultural sector. The population consisted vocational and technical higher education graduates (N= 420) at the vocational and technical higher education institutes in the North Western Provinces in Iran. A descriptive – correlational method was chosen for this study. Independent variables of this research consisted of educational factors (educational management, equipment of institutes, teacher and trainer characteristics, teaching methods and educational contents), personal characteristics and public financial supports. In this study dependent variable consisted job ability and job success. The questionnaire was developed to collect data that was derived from several previous studies.Results showed that 54.7% of respondents were from free quota and 45.35% of them were from employed quota. Majority of employed quota respondent (93.1%) employed in public agricultural sector. Approximately forty one percent (41.4%) of free quota graduates were unemployed, while limited number of free quota graduates (11.4%) were employed full time, and about thirty two percent (32.4 %) of free quota graduates were employed part time. According to the study findings, there were a significant positive relationship between fundamental facilities and equipments, teaching methods (for practical course credits and for theory course credits), teaching ability of educators and trainers, educational content (knowledge and attitude aspects) with free quota graduates, job ability. Also there were a significant positive relationship between scientific ability of faculties, educational content (knowledge, attitude and skill aspects) with job success.

Universities in the developing countries have become increasingly active in international cooperation programs. It seems extraordinary that so little attention is being devoted to generating new approaches to internationalization of higher education in Iran. Ameliorating the quality of higher education require universities to expand their levels of international academic cooperation. This article first looks at the present status of Iran’s international academic collaboration, particularly in sending students abroad, sabbatical leaves and interuniversity cooperation. Then, by using content analysis, policies and practices of international collaboration in some developing countries were analyzed. This procedure resulted in identification of eight main policies and practices. In addition, because of cultural, political and social differences, in-depth interviews were conducted with experts in international relations about the policies and practices in developing countries and their applications in Iran. At last, the article offers its findings and some suggestions for improvement of international cooperation in higher education.