Effective strategies in internationalization of Universities and institutes of higher education in Iran

The globalization origin is an area rather than education, however, education due to its mutual and deep relationship with different wisdom areas and human life elements is perforce to be affected by globalization. The main goal of the present study is to investigate the role of communicative, political, service and university strategies in the internationalization of universities and higher education institutions from the faculty members’ viewpoints based on gender and university degree. This descriptive-survey study was conducted in all 570 faculty members’ of Shahid Beheshti University in Iran academic years of 2011-12. 205 faculty members were selected as the participants of the study using stratified sampling method. The research instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire based on the Likert five-option scale and included 32 items in four communicative (8 items), political (7 items), service (6 items) and university (11 items) strategies. Parametric statistic tests including one-sample t-test, independent t-test, one-way ANOVA and Scheffe’s test were used for data analysis using SPSS 16 softeware. No significant difference was observed between the opinions of male and female faculty members regarding the strategies effective in internationalization of universities and higher education institutions. The difference of the faculty members with different academic degrees regarding the effect of political strategy on internationalization of universities was not significant, while, this difference was significant for communicative, political, service and university strategies. From the viewpoints of the Shahid Beheshti University's faculty members, the use of communicative, political, service and university strategies has an effective role in the Internationalization of Universities and higher education institutions in Iran.