مجله آموزش عالی ایران
سال چهاردهم شماره 3 (پیاپی 55، پاییز 1401)

Problem:

Human development ecosystem refers to a network of diverse stakeholders that create a dynamic network of human capabilities in a suitable environment in dynamic interaction with each other, and continuously improve the quality of people's lives. The level of each of the mentioned capabilities and the extent of their effects on each other play a fundamental role in the efficiency and sustainability of the human development ecosystem. Individual capabilities and employability are two important groups of elements of the network of human abilities, whose level and mutual effects play a key role in human development. While their status in Iran's economy is not known and the knowledge gap is strongly felt.

Considering the above issue, the aim of this article is to analyze the situation and the relationship between capabilities of the graduates of higher education in Iran's economy.

In order to achieve the mentioned goal of the descriptive-analytical method, the field data received from a sample of 1461 students of basic sciences in 2013 and 2014 from Iran's state universities and was analyzed by artificial neural networks technique.

The results of the analysis show that none of the individual capabilities (general, learning, social, managerial and operational) of basic science graduates have a significant effect on their employability. Also, the employability of basic science graduates does not contribute significantly to the development of individual abilities. However, the individual capabilities of basic science graduates significantly (although weakly) affect each other and help each other.

Therefore, in Iran's economy, the capability network of basic science graduates is very weak, and the ecosystem of human development in this field is inefficient and unstable.

Today, higher education plays an important role for countries in achieving sustainable growth and development. Therefore, addressing higher education issues is very important. Among the issues facing the country's higher education, we can mention the problems of its policy making. Therefore, the aim of the current research is to identify the problems of higher education policy making in Iran.

To achieve the goal of the research, qualitative approach and documentary study method as well as phenomenological method were used through semi-structured interview tool. In this way, the data were collected from the published texts of experts about the harms of higher education policy and also from the implemented texts of the interviews conducted with experts until reaching theoretical saturation. Then, the collected data were analyzed by thematic content analysis method and classified into three general categories of structural problems, process problems and problems related to contextual characteristics.

The findings indicated that the macro-process problems of the country's higher education policy-making include "the lack of scientific and practical requirements of the policy-making process" and "weakness in the proper implementation of written policies". Also, the macro-structural problems of the country's higher education policymaking include "weakness to meet the requirements needed for the proper implementation of the centralized administration system" and "inefficiency and low effectiveness of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution". Major problems related to the contextual characteristics of higher education policymaking in the country also include "unfavorability of contextual characteristics for policymaking on higher education issues", "cultural inefficiency of universities in building a normative system and in producing science and providing its requirements" and "incorrect understanding of the phenomenon of Science and Technology and the phenomenon of Higher Education and not reaching a consensus on them. At the end, some suggestions were made to eliminate or minimize these problems along with a set of policy recommendations.

Improving the "higher education policy making of the country" requires providing the ground for the preparation of legal, political, economic, technological, cultural and social factors related to "it". In this regard, following the policy recommendations presented in this research can be fruitful.

The aim of the present study is identifying the contextual components of design and development of entrepreneurial branding of Iranian industrial universities. So that, the present research seeks to take advantage of the postmodern paradigm and considering the approach of university entrepreneurial branding, by conducting interviews with professors of industrial universities in the country, extracting the most important categories of university entrepreneurial branding design and development and finally, based on the findings, proceed to provide a suitable framework for entrepreneurial branding of industrial universities.

For this purpose, the method of phenomenological qualitative research was used. The research community was industrial universities experts. Based on the research method, using purposive sampling method and including 32 industrial universities experts were selected. The data collection process was performed using a semi-structured interview. To determine the validity of the interviews, two methods of member checks and peer review were used. To analyze the data, the data encoding technique of open and axial coding levels was used.

Findings indicate that the four main components of “design and development missions”, “products and services”, “human resources” and “development of university capabilities” are the most important components of the design and development of entrepreneurial branding of the university. In the following, several pivotal components are presented for each of the main components. In such a way that for the main component of the missions key components of “education”, “research”, “scientific policy” and “internationalization”; for the main component of products and services pivotal components of “student” and “university products and services”; for the main component of human resources core components of “staff” and “faculty” and for the main component of capacity development core components of “finance”, “marketing” and “infrastructure” are suggested. Finally, for each of the pivotal components, the university's entrepreneurial branding design and development strategies are presented. Finally, for each of the core components, strategies for the design and development of entrepreneurial branding of the university are presented.

Based on this, it is generally suggested that industrial universities form a committee consisting of experts and professionals in the field of branding, in order to identify and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the unique value of the university brand and make principled and logical planning, to make the best possible use of opportunities in order to lead to the improvement of the university brand. It should also be kept in mind that branding is a complex and multifaceted work that must be done with due care, necessary time investment, necessary financial allocation and detailed planning.

This research was carried out with the aim of presenting an entrepreneurial university model for University of Tabriz.

The direction of the current research is applied with an inductive approach, of a qualitative type, with a content analysis strategy. Data collection was done in the form of in-depth and semi-structured interviews. The participants in this research have been purposefully selected including 14 elites in the field of entrepreneurship in the period of 2021-2022, the data collection tool was open-ended researcher questions, the validity and reliability of the tool was confirmed by the supervisors and advisors.
 

The findings of the inductive content analysis in this research showed that the entrepreneurial university model includes fourteen main factors that are classified into four general categories, which are:  a) factors of applying knowledge, including the main factors: 1 - recognizing the needs of the society and the market, 2- commercialization of science and knowledge, 3- maintaining the relationship between the university and the industry, 4- development of knowledge-based centers, b) human factors, including the main factors: 5- entrepreneurship training, 6- the existence of cooperative and capable faculty members, 7- promotion of organizational culture of entrepreneurship, c) administration factors, including the main factors: 8- entrepreneurial university administration, 9- structural reforms, 10- identifying and removing intra-organizational barriers to entrepreneurship, 11- financial and economic factors, 12- hardware development, d) environmental factors, including the main factors: 13- governmental factors, 14- obstacles outside the organization.

The elements and components of the conceptual framework and extractive model of this research have been obtained according to the conditions, cultural background, atmosphere and organizational culture of University of Tabriz to create an entrepreneurial university in University of Tabriz. Therefore, the current research can be used to transform University of Tabriz into an entrepreneurial university.

Due to the spread of the corona virus in the world, remote work and virtual training in universities and educational centers have gained double importance. The aim of this research is to examine the opportunities and challenges of remote work in universities during the spread of the Corona virus from the point of view of professors.

This research is applied according to its purpose and exploratory according to the collection of information. The statistical population of the research includes university professors in various fields. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. Using the theoretical sampling method, interviews with 17 people continued until reaching theoretical saturation. To ensure the validity and reliability of the data, the review method by the participants and the multilateral method through interviews with different groups of participants were used, and the thematic content analysis was used to analyze the data.

The results showed that remote working of professors and online education has strengths such as communication benefits, improving teaching and research capacities and improving efficiency, and challenges such as communication problems, educational and research harms, weak primary platforms, work-family conflict, and reducing Peace of mind. The volume of materials provided by professors in virtual training has increased due to the reduction of face-to-face communication, and it is also possible to save and read it easily. Strengthening the culture of the availability of professors through electronic communication channels is one of the advantages and reducing the student's concentration in the classroom and the loss of his learning is one of the disadvantages of virtual education. Providing education at home and the need to have certain requirements for holding classes, such as suitable physical space and lack of environmental noise, have caused challenges for professors. Interference between administrative and non-administrative working hours has also been another consequence of professors' remote work.

Professors' telework has both positive and negative consequences and even according to their personal facilities, it has different effects in telework conditions. Its main strength is saving and developing more time to conduct research that is not dependent on laboratory space. Its main weakness is the drop in students' learning level.

There is a common misconception that technology is limited to physical devices (i.e., hard technology). However, technology also includes soft technology, concerned with human and social factors. The emphasis on hard technology has prevented technology education from widening its scope and thus catering to the needs of a changing society. This paper first briefly identifies the common definitions of soft and hard technologies. It then argues that e-learning systems should emphasize both hard and soft technologies.

Through a case study of Iranian universities, the paper identifies seven dimensions of soft technologies in e-learning systems. Then, readiness data for 12 selected Iranian universities are gathered.

According to the results, the "regulations" dimension has the highest relative importance, while its level of preparation is estimated poorly among the selected universities. the score of the “culture” dimension is "average" and the score of other readiness dimensions, including “policy”, "regulations", "supervision", "digital content", "standards" and "financial resources" is "weak" and "relatively weak". Thus, the overall readiness of selected universities is "weak".

Conclustion: 

This shows the need for policy-making and strategic planning by senior management groups and deans of the universities in order to improve their "e-learning prioritization", "budgeting and allocation", "content standards", "supporting regulations", " monitoring systems"; and "stakeholder awareness of the benefits of e-learning systems".