Does higher education could promote student's critical thinking skills? case-study: undergraduate courses of Shahid Chamran University

This research was conducted to investigate the effect of higher education on development of critical thinking. By classified random sampling, 500 undergraduate students for two college in five group ((2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009)) were selected. By compeleting (CCTST) and analyzing data by SPSS, the results indicated that there were significant differences among five groups of students and senior students gaind better scores than the juniors. In addition differences were found in three subscale of the test (evaluation, Analysis, Inference). However, the results revealed that not only higher education has positive effect on development of critical thinking, but also the scores of all students were lower than standard mean of the test. This research suggests that in spite of the fact that development of critical thinking is related to family and educational background of students before entering the higher education, but revision and improvement in the structure and curricular of higher education, is necessary.