An Evaluation of The Cultural Policies of State Higher Education System: Plurality in Cultural Unity/ Coexistence of Scientific and Religious Culture

The present paper analyzes the cultural experts’ and managers’ evaluation of cultural policy-making system of Higher Education and explores the place of the “model of plurality in unity” and “coexistence of scientific/education and religious cultures”. The method used is semi-structured interviews with experts. The findings of the research on the model of plurality in cultural unity indicate that this matter has been considered in the cultural policies to an acceptable level. However, these policies, similar to other cultural policies of the country, suffer from the dominance of interventional attitudes by the government. The intensity of such interventional attitudes has been varying depending on the governments responsible for the enforcement of the policies. Regarding coexistence of religious and scientific cultures, almost all of the interviewees considered it as one of the key cultural issues in universities. According to their evaluation, current cultural policies in the higher education sector do not pay due attention to this issue and no theoretical and practical arrangements have been made for the coexistence of these sets of values and norms. In other words, although there is an increasing trend towards rational interpretation of religion in universities (which has a direct correlation with the increasing scientism among the university actors including teachers and students), there has been a growing emphasis on Sharia-oriented interpretation of religion in recent years. Therefore, there seems to be potential challenges if the current trends continue.