Social Prerequisites and Outcomes of Accountable Curriculum in Higher Education Case Study: Public Universities of Isfahan

Higher education system(HES) is a social institution that has long been set up to accomplish three missions education, research and service, but during recent years entrepreneurship has been added to its missions. Curriculum is the most important component and subsystem of HES and has been thought of as the heart of higher education (HE), because it is the most fundamental means that provides students with knowledge, experience and skills to supply services to the society. The curriculum which can accomplish ideals and missions of universities, organizational (of the university) and social (of the employers and the society) is called accountable curriculum (AC). The main goal of this research was explanation of prerequisites and social outcomes of higher education accountable curriculum (HEAC). To do the research descriptive survey method was used and in order to collect the needed data interview and questionnaire instruments were utilized. The sample of the study which the questionnaire was distributed in, included faculty members and graduate students of university of Isfahan, Technical University of Isfahan, and Medical University of Isfahan and also employers and administrators of the companies of Isfahan city. The participants of the sample were al1ocated using stratified random sampling. The questionnaire surveyed the sample's viewpoints about prerequisites and outcomes of the AC in the field of social services. The collected data were analyzed at descriptive and inferential levels using SPSS. The findings of T-test revealed that the mean of the sample's viewpoints about the explained prerequisites and outcomes had been more than the hypothetical (theoretical) mean of the population (p≤0/001). The multivariate variance analysis(MANOVA) of the data showed that there hadnt been significant difference among viewpoints of faculties, and employers in respect of prerequisites of HEAC, but there had been significant difference between their views about expected social outcomes of HEAC (P ≤0/005).