A Study of Guidance Quality of Supervisors on Dissertations of Postgraduate Students

Higher education has a high position in growth and the development process of countries and admired by all nations and governments. Postgraduate studies, among different higher education studies, play a very significant and excellent role, because it undertakes the training of specialists in the field of education, research, and services. In recent years, the growth of postgraduate study in quantity is increasing and now the quality of it is considered by policy makers. Because postgraduate courses are divided into two educational (passing approved courses) and research (presenting dissertation) courses, dissertation development process and particularly the quality and the way supervisors guide students is also an important matter that is necessary to be investigated. The present research has been done to study the supervisors’ guidance quality in postgraduate studies in accordance with various stages and dimensions on the basis of colleges, and academic ranks of supervisors. In addition, developing a valid questionnaire for evaluating guidance quality from the graduates’ points of views has been another aim of this research. The research is a survey study and has used semi-structured interview and three researcher- made questionnaires. The research population is all the staff members above assistant professor (lecturer) in rank, and also the whole graduates in M.S degrees of Isfahan University. We used stratified sampling appropriate to the size of population. The obtained data were analyzed in two statistical levels, descriptive and inferential. Findings show that supervisors mainly have guided students appropriately in two stages: first, in the early stages of research, for instance like choosing the subject and developing the proposal. Second, the last stage of research like developing the report and writing the essay. Results suggest that there is a difference in supervisors’ guidance quality according to colleges and scientific ranks, but this difference is not significant. The obtained average shows that students are more satisfied with assistant professors (lecturers) than other academic staff.