Pathology of New Discipline Establishment in Iranian Higher Education

The present studyaims to investigate the pathology of establishment process of new academic disciplines in Iran. This study was conducted through mixed exploratory method (qualitative- quantitative). In order to collect the data, 15 experts and policy makers were interviewed through semi structure interviews. The interviews were then categorized and analyzed. In the next phase, a questioner was designed on the bases of the data obtained in the qualitative phase. The validity of the questionnaire was 95.2 which was confirmed by the experts in the field. The results indicated nine major weaknesses in the establishment process ofdisciplines. The results obtained from the quantitative phase showed that weaknesses in the curriculum development with an average of 6.29 and weaknesses in decision making with an average of 3.47 were in the highest and lowest rank, respectively.