Analysis of the Studies Conducted in Higher Education Privatization

This study was conducted with the purpose of addressing the production of scientific works in the field of privatization of higher education abroad and the acquisition of discussions and components focused by studies, the results of the studies and the descriptive and formal analysis of the studies. Accordingly all works produced within the period of 2000-2015 in the Faculty of Education and Psychology database of Shahid Beheshti University were studied. The works were extracted from 33 journals in the field of higher education, including 24 scientific documents including 18 articles, 5 books and a thesis in the field of private higher education and analyzed by descriptive - analytic method. The findings are presented in three parts, the first part, related to the issues and factors considered by the study results showed that topics including the reason of privatization of higher education, goals, advantages and disadvantages and different types of private higher education institutions have been more focused by the researchers. In the second part the results indicated that indiscriminate expansion of the private sector in higher education has led to lower quality, rising unemployment, failure to reduce financial dependence on public sector budgets, lack of responsiveness to labor market needs and priorities of individual interests to the social interests. In the third part the result of formal and descriptive analysis of the studies showed that 58.3% of the studies have been conducted within the years of 2011-2015 and 83% of the studies have used qualitative research and library method and only 17% have used the quantitative method and interviews and questionnaires. In terms of national and transnational studies71% of the studies were national and 29% of the studies were transnational. In terms of cooperation and partnerships the group research was 8% higher than the individual research.