Identifying and ranking the dimensions and components of the evaluation of higher education policies (using thematic analysis method)

Today, all the countries of the world are trying to pay attention to the role of higher education in national development and promotion of knowledge and technology. In fact, it can be said that one of the most valuable resources that society has for progress and development is education. Higher education is actually one of the most effective mechanisms of any country to deal with the biggest challenges of this century.The main goal of this research was to identify dimensions and components for evaluating higher education policies. The current research is an applied-developmental research and its method is mixed exploratory (qualitative and quantitative), which uses the qualitative strategy of thematic analysis to analyze and analyze data and count factors and indicators, and quantitative statistical methods are used to rank them. The data were extracted from document review and related literature and in-depth semi-structured interviews. Interviews with 13 experts in the field of higher education and policy making were conducted in a targeted manner until the stage of theoretical saturation. For validation, three procedures of coding test itself, use of independent coders, and receiving feedback from the interviewees were used. For data analysis, concepts were extracted in three stages. Based on this, 8 relational codes (overarching theme), 26 interpretive codes (organizing theme) and 105 descriptive codes (basic theme) related to the evaluation of higher education policies were identified and extracted and ranked using Friedman variance analysis. The results of the research showed that the components of "educational and cultural factors, legal factors and legal institution" are among the most important effective components in the evaluation of higher education policies, and among them, educational and cultural factors have the first priority.