Defining the Extent of Developing Postgraduate Degrees of Medical Sciences throughout the Country

Offering a postgraduate degree not based on the present and future needs of the society, not only does not relieve any of existing innumerable problems, but may lead to loss of money and national wealth, dependency, craving for obtaining academic degrees, jobbery propagation, professional errors, unemployment of the university graduates, waste of energy and disappointment of those who undertake educational endeavor hoping for academic excellence. It seems not the objective criteria but rather regional rivalries have often been the main drive for offering postgraduate degrees. The main objective of this study has been to define the extent of developing postgraduate degrees of medical sciences throughout the country.
Methods and Procedure: Several of more than 60 input, procedural, output and outcome indicators with prospective data gathering the main of which being the course expenditure scale, local expenses scale, rate of the applicants to the capacity of each course, outcome (considering professional, managerial, knowledge-transferring and productive aspects) scale, the whole number of possible future full- or part-time positions or whether it is conceivable at all have been selected. Experts have mainly been consulted where data was not achievable.
No limitation has been shown for 28 postgraduate degrees. Twenty postgraduate degrees are not required presently and their development may be limited (i.e. refusal of issuing new permit, reducing quota, every-other-year admissions or gradually getting on with other tasks). Twenty three postgraduate degrees may only be offered by one or two universities while 62 ones can be offered by up to 5 universities. Two of them should only be developed by the military authorities. Twenty three postgraduate degrees have been offered only recently (during 2013-2014) or no detailed data could be retrieved about them.
MScs in the Medical Education, Human Ecology, Medical Parasitology, Medical Entomology and Vector Control, Ageing health, Health and media, Toxicology, øFood Sciences in Crisis and Disaster Midwifery, Physiology, Exercise Physiology, Medical Library and Information Science and Health Services Management as well as MScs and PhDs in Medical Ethics, Medical Histology, History of Medical Sciences, Molecular Medicine and Anatomical Sciences should not be developed up to 2020.