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and universities leads to greater attention to the quantity of their publications than
to the quality. In hiring and promotion decisions, a resume with a long list of articles
and books is generally preferred to one with a short list” (p. 85). In Iran, based on
the rule and regulations of the Ministry of Sciences, Research and Technology, fac-
ulty members and students are required to produce and publish scientific and
research articles. Prior to the new regulations, master’s degree students’ disserta-
tions were graded not to 20 (total allotted points on the Iranian grading system) but
to 18; up to two more possible points were allocated based on the students’ research
and scientific articles. Also, a notable portion of the credits that each student needs
to be accepted into a PhD program comes from the student’s science and research
articles. Therefore, Iranian science and research journals have resorted to charging
a fee for publishing articles written by students and professors. As the result, stu-
dents and professors publish articles with the aim of receiving credit and not because
they believe that the society has any need for what they are publishing. Indeed,
universities’ drifting away from industry and the everyday needs of society indicate
that the growth in the quantity of the universities has been in exchange for a decrease
in their quality (Adib 2014 ). Another problem of higher education research in Iran
is unity in law for promotion of faculty members in all disciplines. For example, to
change the status from assistantship to associate position, the main criterion is pub-
lishing papers in ISI journals regardless of the field of study – humanities or pure
sciences. That’s why most Iran’s research papers are published in pure sciences
such as chemistry, while there is an intense dissatisfaction among humanities pro-
fessors. It appears that in Iran, higher education and publishing articles have become
a matter of gaining prestige and earning credits.
Conclusion
Many national and international news agencies and journal papers acknowledged
that Iran has experienced growth in scientific indexes in recent years. In fact, after
the revolution in the late 1970s, for a decade, Iran was plagued by political turmoil
and the war with Iraq. During the next 20 years (beginning of new millennium), all
efforts of Iranian politicians were focused on establishment and development of
universities and institutes, expansion of educational facilities, and recruitment of
teachers. During the past decade, social demand’s pressure for admission to the
universities has declined sharply. Hence from quantitative dimension, today’s Iran
higher education system is facing a shortage of students for undergraduate degrees.
In his recent paper, Habibi ( 2015 :1) describes this problem as an “Iran’s
Overeducation Crisis.” Indeed, university graduates in many fields are suffering
from high unemployment rates. The unemployment rate for university graduates,
which was only 0.44 percent in 1976, had risen to 19.4 percent in 2011. In May
2014, the Ministry of Labour and Social Affair warned that about 4.5 million uni-
versity graduates would enter the labor market in the next few years (Ibid: 1–4).
However, by reduction in the number of candidates for undergraduate, universities’
A.M. Arani et al.