A Study of Mechanisms of Internationalization of Higher Education System in Iran

Due to globalization, international competitiveness, spread of Information Technology, etc. the internationalization of higher education has achieved a strategic status in the field of academic activities and in the light of this progress, different countries are promoting this activity to be able to attain higher academic reputation and status among the peoples of other countries. In the light of the said conditions, the present research, is an attempt to study the mechanisms for promotion of internationalization of Iran’s higher education. Synthetic-explorative method has been employed in this study.
The participants of the qualitative section were university elites who were selected through targeted and network sampling method and the statistical population in the quantitative method consisted of faculty members of state universities of the city of Tehran totaling 301 members who were selected through multistage cluster sampling. The main findings in the qualitative method indicate that international academic cooperation, extracurricular international activities, organizational strategies, supportive strategies, development of human resources, internationalization of curriculums, international opportunities, supervision and evaluation and background conditions are the identified mechanisms for promotion of internationalization of Iran’s higher education. In the quantitative section, all identified variables enjoyed a component loading above 0.7 and this indicated that the identified mechanisms enjoyed the necessary validity for the promotion of internationalization of higher education of Iran.