The Functions of Boards of Trustees and their Role in the Autonomy of Public Universities Affiliated to Iran Ministry of Sciences Research and Technology from the Point of View of their Members

Azargashb, Eznollah; Arasteh, Hamidreza; Sabaghian, Zahra; Towfighi, Jafar

The Functions of Boards of Trustees and their Role in the Autonomy of Public Universities Affiliated to Iran Ministry of Sciences Research and Technology from the Point of View of their Members

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Eznollah Azargashb ¹

Hamidreza Arasteh ²

Zahra Sabaghian ³

Jafar Towfighi ⁴

¹ Instructor, Health and Social Medicine Dept., Faculty of Medicine, Shaheed Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

² Assistant Professor of Scientific Foundations Dept., School of Educational Sciences and psychology, Teacher Training University, Tehran, Iran

³ Professor of Adults Education Dept., Faculty of Educational Sciences and psychology, Shaheed Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

⁴ Professor of Dept. of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Sciences, Tarbiat Moddares University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Background & objective : The responsibilities of boards of trustees in Iranian universities are more restricted comparing to those in the developed countries Therefore doing a comprehensive study in order to develop the functions and authorities of boards of trustees in Iranian universities is of a great importance The aim of the present study was to find the opinions of members of universities boards of trustees and councils about the domain of their responsibilities and their role in the autonomy of public universities affiliated to Iran Ministry of Sciences Research and Technology Methods : First a questionnaire consisted of 66 items listing the responsibilities of boards of trustees in the universities of some other countries was prepared Then by using stratified random sampling 20 universities were selected and their members of boards of trustees and councils were asked to indicate their level of agreement for the 66 listed items of the prepared questionnaire as well as their opinions about the universities autonomy and role of boards of trustees in this regard Results : From 230 respondents 83% agreed with the appropriateness of 55 functions for boards of trustees in Iranian universities Means ( ± SD) of agreement with listed functions universities autonomy and role of boards of trustees in it were respectively 360 (±059) 349 (±065) and 318 (±072) that all are significantly higher than the accepted levels (p

Keywords

Board of trustees

Functions

University autonomy