Future Studies of causal relationships between structural Components for the development of Iran''''s higher education system

The present study aimed to investigate the causal relationships between the structural Components for the development of the Iranian higher education system with a future study approach. In terms of purpose, this research is an applicable one that was prepared with a mixed method with the exploratory design. In the qualitative part, the statistical population of the study consisted of experts of the futures study panel, and in the quantitative part, included faculty members and staff of Islamic Azad universities in Region 3 of the country, 20 people and 5878people, respectively. In the qualitative part of the purposive sampling method, 15 people and in the quantitative part with the combined cluster and stratified sampling method and based on the Cochran''s formula, 361 people were selected as the sample. A researcher-made questionnaire was adopted to collect data. The face and content validity of the instrument(0.881) as well as the combined reliability(0.932) and Cronbach''s alpha(0.922) coefficient were approved by experts. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis tests were used to analyze the data. The five sub-criteria of financial resources(0.825), futuristic organizational culture (0.810), information and communication technology(0.798), agile organizational structure (0.760), and university independence(0.756) were identified according to the results of structural criteria.