The Study of Legal and Managerial Aspects of Autonomy of Universities

This research explains five periods of autonomy transformations in Iranian universities and exhibits different theoretical teachings. It provides a model to describe the mutual and synergetic relationship between 4 concepts as: academic autonomy, administrative autonomy, financial independence, and independence of national and international relations. The paper notices fifth period of autonomy of Iranian universities which begins with approving paragraph A of Article 49 of fourth plan. It answers two questions. First, what are the main problems and obstacles for realizing the Article 49 of fourth plan? Second, what are the ways to overcome these events? The findings are based on exploratory study, interview technique with focused groups and questionnaires. The result categorizes the problems of academic autonomy in 14 groups. Among these problems, the issues like obscurity of new employment regulations, ambiguity of audit court’s supervision, reviewing the structure of organizational posts, and the manager responsibility against supervisory institutions and how he responds them, are important. Also it shows that deprived and new-established universities have more tendencies to be controlled by traditional supervisions and central authorities. Although developed universities try to achieve autonomy through gaining related elements. Finally, some solutions have been provided for the identified problems.