نشریه نامه آموزش عالی
پیاپی 6 (تابستان 1388)

Traditionally, universities follow three missions i.e. instruction, research and services. The purpose of this research was the study of the factors influencing instruction quality in universities. The statistical population was the faculty members of psychology andeducational departments or colleges out of 23 universities. Using the ratio stratified random sampling, 4 universities and 103 faculty members were selected. The data were gathered through two different questionnaires. The validity of the questionnaires werechecked through analyzing content validity and the reliability was estimated through Cronback's alpha. Data were analyzed using ttest. The research was conducted in two steps, first recognizing the effective factors using literature. Second, determining the factors using the Delphi method.The findings showed that among the 12 components and 107 factors related to instruction quality in universities, 11 components and 68 factors were recognized as most important.

In order to examine the future needs of Iranian youth for education and employment, the Iranian Management & Planning Organization (MPO) in collaboration with the "Institute for Research and Planning in Higher Education" (IRPHE) have undertaken a comprehensive research project of "Human Resource Development Planning andPolicy Making"(20002009). The aim of the project was to recognize the status of country's human resources and to study the possibilities of enhancing the existing capabilities, given the real needs of the society, specially, of the labor market. In this paper, we compare the results of those projects with the facts of General Population andHousing Census (2006). Those projects underestimate professional human resources and overestimate total human resources. Finally, we may believe these studies are not official forecasting or modeling of labor demand but they may be categorized as futuristic studies, the models toward which we must limit our expectations.

Women are one of the essential factors for development and because of this, improving their human capital is important. In the recent decade, many women could upgrade their education and access higher education (HE). In general, when women improve theireducation, they can get more skills and find more and better jobs in labor market. The results of this article show that in 2006, women’s share in entire graduate employees is 31% and men’s share is 69%. In addition, 8. 54% of 373000 unemployed graduates are women and 2. 45% of them are men. In addition, the unemployment of educated people, in 2006, is 10. 1%. This rate for men is 6. 9% and for women is 16. 7%. In spite of the economic changes and expanding, and the increasing quality of the women labor force, there is no tendency for increasing the women engagement in labor market.

In today's volatile business environment, each organization needs welleducatedemployees. Therefore, universities and educating institutions in the society play important roles in training people. In this knowledge era, countries that are going with the pace ofdevelopment have to care about their education system. The effectiveness of an education system is a key indicator of development.With regard to the enhancement of IT, new education systems such as distance learning have been emerged. In recent years, these systems have been developed rapidly in Iran. Now, more than one hundred thousand students are using the distance learning system. In this research, the effectiveness of this system was considered. Four factors have been evaluated in order to measure the effectiveness of PayameNour University distance education system i.e. inputs, procedure, outputs, outcomes, and environment, which arecomponents of this system. Four hypotheses were applied to this research:1) The effectiveness of distance education in PayamNour University is related to student's personal factors.2) The effectiveness of distance education in PayameNour University is related to context and educational facilities.3) The effectiveness of distance education in PayameNour University is related to outputs (final and intermediary) and outcomes of education system.4) The effectiveness of distance education in PayameNour University is related to environmental factors

The purpose of the present descriptive study was to determine the attitude, tendency and skill level of graduate students toward information technology. 371 MS and PhD students of Ferdowsi University were selected through stratified random sampling.Information technology attitude and skills questionnaire (ECAR, 2004) was used. Content validity of this questionnaire was confirmed by experts, and the internal consistency of the questions in a pilot study was 0.79. Data analysis was performed by MannWhitneyU, KruskalWallis and Spearman tests. Results showed that there was no significant difference between graduate students in attitude with regard to gender and field of study (p < 0.05). There was a significant difference between student's skills to use information technology with regard to field of study (p > 0.05). As a result, graduatestudents’ lack of essential skills in using computer and technology is a challenge they face. Therefore, conducting some special courses and workshops are useful for them to enhance their skills toward using information technology.

The right and timely information has a strategic role in decisionmaking, action, and success of a university toward selfdevelopment, and the guarantee of its effectiveness and organizational health. In this article, after an introduction to the important role of information in university development, and strategic essence of its management,the strategic leading model (SLM) was introduced for strategic managing of university information system. SLM consists of three main sections (i.e. determining strategic desirability, strategic analysis, and strategic Path Finding) and nine practical steps.Finally, some directions for its establishment and achievement in university were provided. SLM is applicable to other functional systems in university too.

There are many barriers to performing research activities. Understanding the existing situation and resolving the problems and predicaments, especially among the faculty members are necessary. This research was carried out in 2007 with the aim of identifying and examining the barriers to performing research activities among the faculty members of Islamic Azad University (IAU) AliabadeKatool Branch. The research findings show that the most important deterrent factors in research activities are as follows, (in the order of priority): administrative deterrent (with the average of 2.94), deficiencies (2.90), financialeconomic (2.75), personalsocial (2.74) and specialized deterrent factors (with the average of 2.42). Personal barriers, deficiencies and administrative barriers have a significant difference according to men and women’s evaluation. The average of evaluation shows that women give more importance to the role of administrative and personal barriers. In addition, the result of the ttest for the academic qualification variable (Master degree and PhD) shows that there is a significant difference between the two groups for three categories of factors. The statistical technique of the onesidedvariance analysis (Ftest) shows that out of five dependant variables, two variables, namely economic and administrative barriers have a significant difference according to the educational group. On the other hand, only one variable, namely deficiencieshave a significant difference according to the respondent’s employment state.