An Evaluation of Boards of Trustee's Functions in Public Universities Affiliated to Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology (1991-2006)

The "1988 Act of Establishing Boards of Trustees for Iranian Universities and Higher Education Institutions” has defined fourteen responsibilities and functions for boards of trustees. The present study is designed and conducted to evaluate responsibilities and functions of public universities’ boards of trustees affiliated to Ministry of Science, Research & Technology. Using stratified random sampling, 20 universities were selected and 237 minutes of meetings during 1991-2006 with 3501 agendas were contently analyzed. Results of this study revealed that most decisions in these meetings were made regarding to faculties and financial affairs, and only 14 percents of approvals were related to policy making. In general, all universities functioned similary, but type 1 universities showed more activities in approval of administrative organization (p<0.019) and fund raising (p<0.046).