مجله آموزش عالی ایران
سال هشتم شماره 2 (پیاپی 30، تابستان 1395)

This descriptive survey aimed to investigate challenges of indigenous selection in University Entrance Exams. The study population included vice-chancellors of academic affairs, vice-chancellors of student's affairs, heads of security department of state universities affiliated to the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology, and those managers involved in indigenous selection from Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution, Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology, and National Organization for Educational Testing. Each completed a measure developed based on interview and previous records to assess indicators related to each dimension. Factor Analysis and Analysis of Variance indicated that educational, cultural-familial, social, and economic dimensions are the most important challenges of indigenous selection, respectively. Current results also indicated that the most significant challenge in the educational dimension was the reduction of elite student's access to top universities and professors. Overall, 53.5% of the respondents expressed their strongest opposition to the educational dimension of indigenous selection, with vice-Chancellors of academic affairs accounting for 61.5% of the total figure. Finally, a significant difference was found between respondent's opinions in terms of educational and cultural-familial dimensions, but not social and economic aspects.

This research tries to identify and analyze the applied research’s (demand-driven) success and failure factors. To that end, Isfahan University of Technology data in the decade (2002-2012) was collected as a case. The study is considered among the quantitative method. The study population consisted of 210 faculty members of Isfahan University of Technology who had had experience in “applied research” within the desired range. Cochran formula was used to determine the sample size. For data collecting, at first we arranged interviews with leading experts, and then a questionnaire was used to reaping data. The validity of research tool’s context confirmed by expert's opinion and its reliability tested by Cronbach’s alpha method. Factor analysis used to evaluate inferential statistics. The findings of the research illustrate that the lack of a “systematic and dynamic relationship between universities and industry” has the highest average, whereas the lack of “researchers’ commitment, research ethics and scientific integrity” has the lowest average. “Management regime and research policy” component are recognized as the most fundamental obstacle. Qualitative analyses reaffirmed this component as the underlying factor for getting success in universities and industry's relationship.

Internalizing reading behavior means to create independent readers who can read life long and understand what they read in their personal, educational and career life, without the need of a teacher. The problem of most students is that they do not have independent reading skills and expect to learn in classroom via listening. In other words, they dont find and read books voluntarily and through intrinsic motivation. They only read limited resources and leaflet to do classroom tasks. But there are evidences that teacher behavior and teaching methods provides some incentive for students to strengthen their independent reading behavior.
The aim of this study was to identify behaviors and teaching methods that directly or indirectly influenced student's reading motivation.
We used content analysis to extract main topics of semi-structured interviews done with 42 students. All students of Kurdistan University were the research population. The researchers used purposive and snowball sampling method (sample selecting criteria was active and motivated readers who read non task materials and topic saturation for sample size). Also, triangulation method for data finding validation was used. Findings from interview with students discussed with 18 professors whom students believed their behavior and teaching methods motivate them.
Findings: Teacher's communication with students, scientific knowledge, creating a friendly atmosphere, and the power of speech and presentation by the Lecturer were most important codes. By category codes, we find four general themes: Moral-Humanity, scientific skills, technical skills and organizational commitment. The Four General Themes and Their detailed condes confirmed by lecturers mostly.
Lecturer Behavior and his teaching method can influence student's reading motivation. In other words, lecturer's behavior and university climate can affect lifelong learning via motivate students. This study shed light on some criteria for lecturer assessment.

Current research is aimed at providing a model of financial strategic decision making processes. Its primary objectives are to determine the factors influencing financial strategic decision making adopting a cognitive approach and prioritizing them. In a cognitive pattern, in addition to environmental and organizational factors, facilities, the government and institutions, serious attention is also paid to individual components and,in actual fact, to cognitive process of decision making (the how-to of absorbing and processing knowledge and information along with the role of the values, cognition and motives).
A key factor to the success of higher education universities and institutions is the quality of financial decisions. Analyzing these decisions can contribute both to knowing a most complex cognitive mechanism and improving strategic financial decision making processes. Therefore, in this study, a particular model of the effect of the factors influencing strategic financial decisions and the way this is carried out is provided. The method of the research is of mixed (qualitative and quantitative) type. In the first stage, the qualitative method has been adopted to provide the model and thirteen scientific and executive experts on the field have been thoroughly interviewed. The findings have been analyzed using three coding stages (open, selective and axial). This model shows that strategic financial decisions of the universities are affected by the environmental and organizational factors as well as the nature of decision making the circumstances under which the decisions are made and individual components. In the second stage of the research, the model provided in the first phase of the research is tested quantitatively. The population of the research includes 122 managers of University of Tehran of whom 93 have been chosen via a simple random sampling.
To analyze the mentioned effects of the model, the PLS statistical software has been made use of. The findings verify the impact of environmental factors on individual components and organizational factors yet fail to confirm the effect of environmental factors on the nature of the decisions and the circumstances under which they are made. Moreover, the impact of the nature and circumstances of decision making and organizational factors on strategic financial decisions is supported. However, the direct effect of individual factors on strategic financial decisions is less than the process involves the nature and circumstances of decision making. Furthermore, the nature and circumstances of decision making is proved to be affected by the individual components and organizational factors. In addition, the findings suggest that individual components have considerable effects on the nature and circumstances of decision making in universities so that creating a desirable situation can provide supportive infrastructures to make effective, useful decisions in the organization. Considering these facts, a number of suggestions are offered to the managers and researchers.

From the organizational perspective, the existence of an effective balance between work and life, in addition to the personal consequences that accompanies the individual, leads to improvements in the employment condition and retention system, and ultimately, the promotion of commitment and productivity in the staff. Present study, while measuring the level of work-life balance that perceived by employees at Yazd University, explores the relationship between the five dimensions of Neo's personality and the work-life balance. This is a descriptive-correlational study. Population of this study was comprised of employees of Yazd University. Among them, 204 individuals were selected by simple random sampling method based on Cochran formula in limited communities with error rate 5% and 183 questionnaires were returned. The tool used in this research is a researcher-made questionnaire on work-life balance and neo-personality standard questionnaire. In order to analyze the data, descriptive, inferential statistics and structural equation modeling using Smart PLS software have been used. Results of showed that among the dimensions of personality, compatibility, openness to experience and psychometric rhetoric with respect values ​​of 5/347, 3/549 and 6/427 are significantly related to the work-life balance construct and about 42% of Work-life balance variance is explained by personality dimensions. Finally, based on the results of this research, the employees of Yazd University have a good level of work-life balance and the personality is one of the factors influencing the individual's ability to create work-life balance.

Explaining the quality of the campus requires an understanding of the environmental conditions and is one of the forms of environmental conditions in the classroom atmosphere of the campus, which consists of several dimensions. Therefore this study aimed to investigate the role of creative atmosphere of the classroom (the separation of ten dimension) were performed to predict the quality of university campuses. Methodology of research was survey and cross-correlation research. The population was the graduate students in University campuses of Kharazmi, Shahid Beheshti and Allameh Tabatabaei in 2015-2016 academic year. This study was random sampling. Number of samples based on Kregci-Morgan table, 116 person were selected. For data collection questionnaire class creative atmosphere (94/0= α) and university campuses quality questionnaire (99/0= α) were used. Content validity of the tools was determined by the opinion of the professors. Finally, the data were analyzed by using software spss.vs22 and regression method and Whitney U test. The results showed that component of the classroom creative atmosphere provided a significant explaining R2=0/31 of variance of campus quality (p