Designing future scenarios for higher education in Iran

Given the key role of higher education, it is important to study the future of universities and understand the issues facing them. The purpose of this study is to develop future scenarios for higher education in the next ten years. Given the quality of the present research and the field of futures studies; To design the scenarios, the Global Business Network (GBN) method has been used, which is the most common and efficient method of scenario planning, especially in the field of higher education in the country. The statistical population of the study is higher education experts that 16 experts were interviewed without structure using the snowball method. Data from unstructured interviews were analyzed using theme analysis method. Which ultimately leads to a list of key factors in seven areas (social, economic, technology, political, legal and managerial, institutions in the field of higher education) and 33 sub-factors. The most critical drivers of higher education in terms of uncertainty and importance include: lack of sustainable policies, investment in new technologies. Using critical uncertainties and creating a scenario matrix and referring to all the factors and information collected in the previous steps, four variables of critical drivers called "Land of Knowledge", "Gray Shadows", "Burnt Village", "Stagnant Water" "Compiled.