The Relation between University and Industry and Its Challenges: A Qualitative Study among Tehran University Students

A more increasing contribution to innovation and technology development, along with educational and research missions, is the new identity universities adopt in knowledge societies. Accordingly, universities, as the foundation generating knowledge as well as an entrepreneur, play an essential role in innovation. Having conducted an experimental study, the current article both described the interaction between universities and industry and evaluated the challenges this relation would face via a qualitative method and through analyzing Tehran University PhD students’ viewpoints. As the results suggested, there was no consistent and meaningful relation between universities and industry. Moreover, there was no evidence showing the new identity of universities regarding industry. The best state of this relation is its socialistic model. As the PhD students stated, the absence of reciprocal needs including the absence of industry’s feeling of need for universities as well as universities’ lack of motivation for collaboration with industry were the factors preventing these two institutions from establishing a suitable relation.