Study of Obstacles of Faculty Member Development in University, A Case Study: Islamic Azad University

Faculty members are the most important capital in universities and higher education institutes, and investment in Development programs and improving them is so important. The research goal is to study the obstacles of faculty members Development in Islamic Azad University. It is a descriptive survey research and used researcher-made questionnaire for gathering data. The statistic Society consists of all full-time faculty members of IAU in regions 8 and12. By means of stratified sampling method, 360 of them were selected. Research tool in validity aspect is content and was confirmed by some of the professional professors in higher education. Cronbach alpha is used for determining the questionnaire reliability) =0. 81). Data analysis was done by means of SPSS software program (version 11. 5). The results show that from 13 obstacles of faculty member improvement an average of 8 obstacles were higher than the middle average. Friedman test results show that the most important obstacles consist of ignoring faculty members’ needs and preferences, lack of enough support from university managers, non-arbitrariness of programs and lack of necessary motivations and encouragement. Investigating the demographic variables shows that there is no meaningful relation between variables (gender, faculty members work experience, scientific grade and educational course) and obstacles of faculty member improvement. Finally some proposals were presented to enhance the efficiency of faculty members’ improving programs.