The Most Important Issues of Agriculture and Natural Resources of Higher Education in Iran

This paper aimed to investigate the most important issues of higher education in agriculture and natural resources. The research method was descriptive method via survey approach. Target population consisted of 70 participants in the "National Meeting of Agriculture and Natural Resources Higher Education: Vision 1404" which held in January 2015 in Gorgan University of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources. 54 participants were selected based on random sampling method. Using SPSS and EXCEL software, the gathered data were analyzed. In order to rank the items Friedman mean was used. In order to compare the importance of each intra-university and outside-university issues Wilcoxon test was used. The results showed that the most important outside-university issues are "existing large number of unqualified universities, institutes, centers and units", "decrease quality of the enrolled persons in agriculture and natural resources fields" and "lack of spatial planning of agricultural education". Moreover, the most important intra-university issues are "low share of practical course / skill training", "little attention to present practical unit" and "not client- basis or no applicability of thesis". The results of Wilcoxon test showed although the average score of intra-university issues was higher than outside-university issues, but the difference is not significant.