Effective institutional autonomy in public universities in Iran: a necessity for mobility in globalized environment

Determining an appropriate level of institutional autonomy of universities is the main issue for universities and higher education in Iran. The purpose of this study was to determine the effective outstanding characteristics of institutional autonomy in public universities affiliated with Ministry of Science, Research and Technology by evaluating attitudes of certain Iranian higher education constituencies. In addition to a questionnaire for data collection, legal documents were also investigated. In this descriptive study, 35 components of university institutional autonomy which was introduced by Anderson and Johnson were used. A review of rules and regulations showed that Iran’s public universities have autonomy in 8 components. Moreover, constituencies groups demanded autonomy in 16 additional components. These 24 components are in the "substantial autonomy" and "procedural autonomy" areas. Applying these results alters the governance of public universities in Iran from "state control" model to "state supervision" model and makes them more agile in their internal and external competitive environments.