Higher Education Challenges about Ethnicity and Policy Making Strategies

Due to the entrance of students and professors from different regions of the country, university environment as an environment with multiple educational and cultural functions, has various and different ethnicities and subcultures. These conditions can be used as a tool for development of country's development goals. The assessment of the upstream documents suggests a lack of clear policies on the issues of ethnic groups in the country's higher education system. Regarding this policy vacuum, this paper attempts to explore the necessary dimensions of ethnic policy in the country's higher education system and the requirements of ethnic policy in a qualitative study. The semi-structured interview was conducted with 15 faculty members and cultural authorities from different ethnic backgrounds and different academic disciplines with academic and research work in ethnicity. The analysis of qualitative data by "thematic analysis" shows that the challenges of higher education in ethnicity include: paradoxical showing of the strengthening of ethnic identity against national identity, the probability of ethnocentrism in universities, dominance of specific manners of the presidents and managers in the issue of ethnicity, the weakness in the management of cultural activities of ethnic groups, the politicization of the issue of ethnicity in universities, and the non-academic encounter with the issue of ethnicity at the university. From the viewpoint of the interviewees, ethnic policy in the universities should have cultural, social, political, educational and religious dimensions, and it is necessary to have strategic requirements in the field of ethnic policy in the universities, and some do's and don'ts should be codified.