Factor Analysis of Effective Indicators in Comprehensive System of Performance Appraisal of Higher Education

Remarkable progresses of science and extensive development of modern technologies have led academic ability to become one of the tools of power. Accordingly, governments are trying to promote their higher education system in such a way that their position would improve on the basis of its performance. One of the most effective ways is to develop a comprehensive and integrated model for evaluation and ranking of universities and higher education institutions. Reaching such a model needs identifying factors and criteria that are related to evaluating the universities performance, choosing compatible factors with Iran’s higher education system, classification of the criteria and finally, representing them in a model. In this research, according to the literature review and expert’s point of view, eight factors were presented as the basic parts of the model as follows: educational, research, cultural, student, management and human resource, information technology, quality assurance and educational and research space factors. By using factor analysis, the extracted criteria were classified according to these eight factors and the final model was presented. The use of this model will cause integrating the system of performance evaluation of universities and higher education institutions. It will further help them to pursue their competition in such a way that consequently help the country to reach the desired scientific capability.