Reasons Why Elites Do Not Immigrate: A Representation of Professorship Identity

The objective of this paper is to study the concept of academic identity and professorship identity through investigating the intellectual-valuational fundamentals of academics. Access to these fundamentals is difficult and requires an indirect method. Hence, attempts have been made to interpret the experiences of the academics who have had the experience of teaching at the foreign universities as well as Iranian universities on the margin. These academics of the universities on the margin have studied outside Iran and are still in contact with the top universities of the world, but their income as well as educational and research facilities are not at standard level. Why these academics do not immigrate to other countries? Interpretive phenomenology was employed for the analysis of the problem and targeted sampling was continued to collect the data from amongst the said academics based on theoretical saturation. The results indicate that the said academics enjoy a valuational-intellectual system which is called “academic patriotism” here. This academic patriotism includes accompanying “the society” through establishing a dynamic connection with the body of the society; marketing for the university; working “for the society” through educating human force for the future and production of a knowledge that solves a problem of the society.